How Texas Tourism Sold the Lone Star State in Three Films
Texas Tourism's 2013 film campaign, created by Dallas-based agency Slingshot and published in the United States in March 2013, presents three distinct film executions — "Live Music," "The Cowboy Experience," and "The Great Outdoors" — each built around a singular dimension of the state's identity, unified by the long-running tagline "It's Like a Whole Other Country."
The campaign operates as a triptych rather than a conventional advertising series. Each film isolates one experiential promise of travel to Texas and develops it with narrative depth rather than a catalogue of attractions. "Live Music" draws on Austin's globally recognised music culture. "The Cowboy Experience" reaches into the mythological fabric of Texan identity — ranches, rodeos, and the open range that have defined the state's self-image for generations. "The Great Outdoors" positions Texas as a destination for landscape-driven leisure, a counterintuitive proposition for a state more often associated with cities and culture than wilderness. Together, the three films form a coherent argument: that Texas is not a single destination but a geography of radically different experiences, all accessible within one state's borders. In the United States travel market, where domestic leisure competition is intense, that argument carries real strategic weight. The campaign targets leisure travellers across the US considering both intrastate and interstate travel, presenting Texas Tourism as the umbrella brand capable of satisfying multiple traveller typologies simultaneously. According to ispot.tv, the "Music" execution was published on February 19, 2013, and "Great Outdoors" on February 20, 2013, suggesting a staggered release designed to maintain sustained attention across the spring travel planning window. Clapboard Score: 63/100.
Slingshot won the Texas Tourism account in January 2012, according to mediapost.com, displacing TM — an Interpublic Group agency that had held the account for approximately ten years, also per mediapost.com. That transition brought a new creative philosophy to a mature account, and the 2013 film campaign represents the first full expression of Slingshot's strategic positioning for the brand.
The underlying insight is straightforward. Texas does not need awareness — it is one of the most culturally legible states in the United States. What it requires is desire, and desire is built through specificity, not breadth. By dividing the campaign into three discrete experiential territories — live music, the cowboy experience, and the great outdoors — Slingshot allows each film to speak directly to a distinct traveller motivation rather than attempting to satisfy all of them at once. This avoids the dilution that characterises much destination advertising, where the pressure to represent an entire region produces generic imagery that resonates with no one in particular. The competitive context in 2013 was demanding. Destination marketing organisations including Visit Florida and the Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board were investing heavily in film-led campaigns targeting the same domestic leisure traveller. Texas Tourism, which spent approximately twenty million dollars on advertising in 2010 according to mediapost.com, was operating in a category where production quality and narrative clarity were baseline expectations, not differentiators. In 2013, global international tourist arrivals reached approximately 1.087 billion, up around five percent from 2012, according to unwto.org — a rising tide that nonetheless intensified competition among US domestic destinations for the attention of American leisure travellers. Slingshot's response was to anchor the campaign in cultural authenticity, treating Texas not as a tourism product but as a living narrative.
Director Jeff Bednarz helmed all three executions for Texas Tourism, working through production company Directorz, as documented by shootonline.com. The campaign's creative leadership was provided by Susan Levine, Executive Creative Director at Slingshot, with art direction by Clay Coleman, also per shootonline.com.
The choice to shoot three separate films rather than one anthology spot is itself a creative decision with strategic consequences. Each execution is free to establish its own visual grammar — the rhythm of a live music venue, the stillness of a working ranch at dawn, the scale of open Texas terrain — without having to transition between them. This structural independence allows the cinematography and editing of each film to serve its subject rather than serve continuity with the others. For "The Cowboy Experience," that means unhurried composition, wide frames, and a colour palette drawn from the land itself. For "Live Music," it means energy, proximity to performers, and the kind of saturated evening light that communicates the warmth of a crowd. Bednarz and Coleman's approach prioritises the felt quality of each experience over factual description, which is consistent with the broader strategic logic: these films are designed to generate emotional appetite for a place, not to inform a viewer of its contents. The tagline "It's Like a Whole Other Country," which Texas Tourism has sustained across multiple campaign cycles, does important structural work here. It gives the triptych a unifying voice without requiring the three films to look or feel identical. Each film can be its own world — because the tagline has already acknowledged that Texas contains multitudes. The result is a campaign whose creative ambition is matched by its structural intelligence.
No verified consumer performance data for the Texas Tourism 2013 campaign — including reach figures, recall scores, or attributable visitor numbers — is publicly available. Assessment therefore rests on the structural effectiveness of the work and its recognised industry standing.
The campaign earned two Telly Awards in 2013 — one Silver and one Bronze, both in the Travel and Tourism category — recognising the television executions from this broader campaign cycle, according to travelpress.com. It also received two W3 Awards in 2013, per w3award.com, though the specific categories and award levels are not detailed in available sources. These four honours across two respected industry programmes confirm that the work was received as genuinely accomplished within the travel advertising category, not merely competent. Structurally, the triptych format demonstrates clear strategic thinking: the decision to separate three experiential territories into three films allows each execution to build genuine emotional resonance rather than spreading a single budget across a composite message. The campaign's greatest risk — that three separate films might read as disconnected — is managed through the consistent application of the "It's Like a Whole Other Country" tagline, which provides brand coherence without creative constraint. The Clapboard Score of 63/100 reflects a campaign that executes its brief with craft and intelligence but stops short of the kind of cultural breakthrough that earns scores in the upper quartile. The creative framework is sound, the production quality is evident, and the award recognition is substantive — but the campaign's ambition remains largely contained within category conventions rather than redefining them.
The Texas Tourism 2013 campaign is a three-film series created by agency Slingshot, published in the United States in March 2013. The films — "Live Music," "The Cowboy Experience," and "The Great Outdoors" — each explore a distinct dimension of Texas as a travel destination, unified by the tagline "It's Like a Whole Other Country."
Jeff Bednarz directed all three films in the Texas Tourism 2013 campaign. He worked through production company Directorz, with creative leadership from Executive Creative Director Susan Levine and art direction by Clay Coleman at Slingshot, as documented by shootonline.com.
The Texas Tourism 2013 campaign won two Telly Awards — one Silver and one Bronze in the Travel and Tourism category — according to travelpress.com. It also received two W3 Awards in 2013, per w3award.com, recognising the quality of the film executions created by Slingshot for Texas Tourism.
Slingshot used three separate films to allow each Texas Tourism execution to build its own visual language and emotional tone without compromise. This structure lets "Live Music," "The Cowboy Experience," and "The Great Outdoors" each speak directly to a distinct traveller motivation, avoiding the dilution common in destination advertising that attempts to represent an entire region at once.
Slingshot won the Texas Tourism account in January 2012, according to mediapost.com. The agency replaced TM, an Interpublic Group agency that had held the account for approximately ten years. The 2013 film campaign represents the first major film-led creative expression of Slingshot's strategic approach to the Texas Tourism brand.
The Texas Tourism 2013 campaign by Slingshot holds a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100. The score reflects a campaign that demonstrates clear strategic structure, authentic creative craft, and substantive award recognition, while remaining largely within established travel advertising conventions rather than breaking new creative ground.
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