How Visit Myrtle Beach Made Comedy the Competitive Edge in Summer Tourism
"Beach with the Best" is a 2022 integrated tourism campaign created for Visit Myrtle Beach by MMGY, The Workshop, and Valiant Pictures, using a mock live-news format to position Myrtle Beach, South Carolina as the definitive American summer beach destination through dry humor, slapstick, and fourth-wall comedy.
Launched across the United States in June and July of 2022, the campaign deploys two on-location news anchors — not the ocean kind — who narrate the relatable wins and comedic mishaps that define a Myrtle Beach vacation. The premise is simple and deliberate: ordinary beach behavior becomes evidence of being among the best beachers on the best beach. Director Vincent Lin of Valiant Pictures shapes the tone with fourth-wall-breaking glances, camera pans that linger a beat too long, and beach references so loosely interpreted they confuse even the co-anchor. The result is a campaign that earns its laughs while delivering a clear destination message.
The campaign was produced through a longstanding creative relationship between The Workshop and Myrtle Beach tourism, with Valiant Pictures and FreshFly enlisted as production partners. The integrated effort spanned film and additional media assets, totalling four documented creative executions, including a mock-news segment titled "LIVE: Man Nets HUGE Fish from Myrtle Beach Pier!" in which angler "Blue" Gil Gomez showcases a catch from a Myrtle Beach pier — framed, naturally, as breaking news. The Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce served as the client alongside Visit Myrtle Beach, reflecting the destination's institutional commitment to sustained, brand-led marketing in the competitive US leisure travel market.
Visit Myrtle Beach entered 2022 with a clear brand architecture already in place. MMGY Global began developing a new brand position for Visit Myrtle Beach with the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce and CVB in 2019, according to myrtlebeachareachamber.com, establishing a multi-year foundation before any consumer-facing creative appeared. That groundwork produced the 2021 campaign "You Belong at the Beach," documented by Cms6 Revize as the first execution of the new brand platform, spanning television, paid search, paid social, out-of-home, public relations, and partnerships. "Beach with the Best" is the direct successor — sharpening the emotional positioning into something more distinctive and harder to replicate.
The strategic rationale for comedy is rooted in competitive pressure. Myrtle Beach competes directly against destination markets with considerably larger media budgets. The U.S. Travel Association's Destiny Award for Best Integrated Marketing Campaign, which "Beach with the Best" won in 2022 according to visitmyrtlebeach.com, placed Myrtle Beach ahead of rival nominees including Orlando and St. Augustine — two of the most heavily marketed leisure destinations in the United States. Choosing humor as the campaign's primary register gives Visit Myrtle Beach a tonal identity that mass-market competitors like Orlando's tourism apparatus — backed by theme park advertising infrastructure — cannot easily adopt without undermining their own brand.
The market environment in 2022 amplified the stakes. U.S. travel advertising spend reached approximately four point six billion dollars that year, a rise of roughly forty-two percent year over year, according to cms6.revize.com. Digital video advertising across all US industries was projected at a substantial figure for 2022, up significantly from the prior year, according to Finance Yahoo. In that crowded, resurging market, a campaign that generates earned attention through comedy rather than relying solely on paid reach represents a structurally sound use of a regional destination's budget.
Vincent Lin directs "Beach with the Best" with a sensibility that prioritises timing over spectacle. The campaign's central creative device — two deadpan news anchors reporting live from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina — requires a precise tonal calibration: too broad and the joke collapses; too restrained and the destination message disappears entirely. Lin, working through Valiant Pictures, finds the register in the editing and camera grammar rather than the performance alone.
Production credits for "Beach with the Best" are documented publicly. Director of photography Phil Bradshaw of FreshFly shoots the campaign with a visual language that mimics local news broadcast conventions closely enough to make the parody land — wide establishing shots, slightly too-long holds, and coverage that treats a pier fisherman as a major news event. Editor Meg Sarachan of FreshFly shapes the rhythm that makes the fourth-wall breaks feel accidental rather than staged. Production designer Nick Horton builds the on-location world that sits credibly between genuine beach reportage and absurdist comedy. Sound designer and mixer Geoff Strasser completes the broadcast illusion at the audio level, according to valiantpictures.com.
Photographer Bo Bridges contributes to the campaign's still and integrated assets, extending the visual identity beyond the film executions. Executive producers Tom Farrell of The Workshop, Chayne Gregg of FreshFly, Adam Zimmer of Valiant Pictures, and Matthew Damato of Valiant Pictures collectively oversee a production that spans multiple creative formats — a requirement for a fully integrated campaign serving both broadcast and digital channels across the US market. The four documented media assets reflect a campaign built for multi-platform deployment, with the mock-news format adapting naturally to connected-TV environments and social video formats that dominated US digital advertising consumption in 2022.
"Beach with the Best" earns verified recognition from one of the US travel industry's most competitive award programmes. The campaign won the U.S. Travel Association Destiny Award for Best Integrated Marketing Campaign in 2022, according to visitmyrtlebeach.com, defeating entries from Orlando and St. Augustine — a result that benchmarks the campaign's creative and strategic effectiveness against peer destinations operating in the same US leisure travel category. Clapboard rates "Beach with the Best" 64 out of 100.
No broader verified performance data — including reach figures, conversion metrics, or visitation lift attributable specifically to the campaign — is publicly available for "Beach with the Best." The absence of published performance figures is common for regional destination marketing organisations, which typically report aggregate tourism outcomes rather than campaign-specific attribution. What the Destiny Award result does confirm is that the campaign satisfied the criteria of an industry jury evaluating strategic coherence, creative integration across channels, and market impact relative to the destination's competitive set.
Structurally, the campaign's mock-news format carries inherent amplification potential that standard destination advertising does not. Comedy-driven content in the travel and leisure category generates higher rates of organic social sharing, and a format that mimics broadcast news creates an additional layer of shareability through the contrast between the serious presentation and the absurd subject matter. For a Myrtle Beach tourism effort competing against destinations with larger paid media footprints, that structural advantage in earned attention represents measurable efficiency even without publicly disclosed return-on-spend figures.
"Beach with the Best" is a 2022 integrated tourism campaign for Visit Myrtle Beach. Created by MMGY, The Workshop, and Valiant Pictures, it uses two mock live-news anchors to present the relatable, comedic moments of a Myrtle Beach, South Carolina vacation as proof that visitors are among the best beachers at the best beach.
Vincent Lin of Valiant Pictures directed "Beach with the Best." Lin shaped the campaign's comedic tone through fourth-wall-breaking glances and deliberately awkward camera pans. Director of photography Phil Bradshaw of FreshFly and editor Meg Sarachan also contributed to the campaign's mock-news visual and editorial style, according to valiantpictures.com.
"Beach with the Best" won the U.S. Travel Association Destiny Award for Best Integrated Marketing Campaign in 2022, according to visitmyrtlebeach.com. The campaign competed against and defeated entries from Orlando and St. Augustine, two of the most heavily marketed leisure destinations in the United States, establishing Visit Myrtle Beach as a leader in tourism creative.
MMGY led the agency work on "Beach with the Best," with The Workshop and Valiant Pictures serving as creative and production partners alongside FreshFly. The Workshop's involvement reflects a longstanding production relationship with Myrtle Beach tourism, as documented by the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce and visitmyrtlebeach.com, beginning with brand development work in 2019.
"Beach with the Best" is the 2022 successor to the 2021 campaign "You Belong at the Beach," which launched Visit Myrtle Beach's repositioned brand platform, according to cms6.revize.com. MMGY began developing that brand position with the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce in 2019, making "Beach with the Best" the sharpened, comedy-driven expression of a multi-year strategic foundation.
Myrtle Beach competes directly against larger-budget US destinations including Orlando and St. Augustine in the leisure travel category. U.S. travel advertising spend reached approximately four point six billion dollars in 2022, a roughly forty-two percent increase year over year, according to cms6.revize.com, making tonal differentiation through comedy a strategically sound approach for a regional destination marketer.
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