Pick Ellijay: Tourism Campaign

Gilmer county chamber

This town has it all: Ellijay, Georgia.

“Within a year of hiring Outlive Creative, we went from virtually unknown, to winning one of the most respected marketing awards for the state of Georgia.” - ceo & president of gilmer chamber

the client

A small town nestled in the North Georgia Mountains called Ellijay. During COVID the town tripled their tourism revenue because there was a large influx of people from Atlanta and nearby Florida escaping to the closest mountains.

objective

With absolutely zero professional photo or video content in their library, it was our mission to aid and scale tourism revenue and bring the town of Ellijay into the spotlight as the most sought after getaway destination in Georgia with photo and video.

our role

Outlive was contracted to provide the town of Ellijay with professional photo and video assets for online, print, and BROADCAST tourism campaign efforts involving: recreational activities, lodging, dining, nightlife, shopping, and wineries.

We collaborated with the Gilmer Chamber on concepts and pre-production, and our team led production and post-production editing.

responsibilities

Creative / Story Development

Concept creation + script writing.

Pre-Production

Sourcing talent, organizing crew, develop shoot logistics.

Production

Shooting, directing, lighting, hair & make up.

Post-Production

Sourcing music, editing, color correction, sound design, hiring voiceover.

Photography

Lifestyle images used for branding, social media, website, and print.

Project Management

Oversaw the production end of the project to ensure the visual content would be delivered on time and within budget.

testimony from the president and ceo of gilmer chamber of commerce

WAS IT WORTH INVESTING IN OUTLIVE FOR YOUR VIDEO AND PHOTO NEEDS AND WHY? PLEASE SHARE THE DIFFERENCE IT MADE.

“Absolutely. Prior to investing with Outlive Creative, our collateral material lacked diversity, creativity, and style. We started with two contracts with Outlive Creative and ended up with over 10. Everything they produced for us was high-quality, beautiful, and they had suggestions that enhanced what we had originally planned. Our board of directors and commissioners have been extremely happy with our choice. We have also had multiple other chambers of commerce or destination marketing organizations ask us who we hired, because they were also impressed with the work.”
WHAT ARE THE PROS OF VIDEO IN GENERAL?
“Having high quality, beautiful, modern collateral has changed our destination marketing organization. Within a year of hiring Outlive Creative, we went from virtually unknown, to winning one of the most respected marketing awards for the state of Georgia.”

WHAT WAS IT LIKE WORKING WITH OUTLIVE VS. OTHER OPTIONS LIKE A BIG AGENCY OR ONE INDIVIDUAL FREELANCER?

“Working with Race, Jessica, and the rest of the team was easy, professional, on time, and always delivered what we wanted. I was always impressed with their creativity and their eye for finding the most beautiful way to tell our story.”

Do you see a return on investment with our photos & video? If so, can you share some numbers or percentage increases?

“Our engagement went up over 30% on multiple platforms, we also created an award-winning website and an award-winning Tourism Guide, which features almost exclusively photos and content from Outlive Creative. Our website and especially the Visitor and Tourism information on our website, is exclusively photography from Outlive Creative. We are about to launch 12 new videos, which are also created by Outlive Creative. We are also running 2 TV commercials on local Atlanta stations, which cover over 9 million residents, which has driven an entire new submarket to our region. Our commercials can be seen on channel 11 in Atlanta.”

Would your company be at the level you are at today without our photos & videos?

“Absolutely not. We have been elevated by the work we have contracted with Outlive Creative.”

story development + pre-production

We wrote the scripts and collaborated with ellijay on shoot locations and the timelines for each shoot day. Outlive managed all the crew, equipment, travel arrangements, and talent sourcing.

production days

This scope of work was the efforts of 1+ year of shooting throughout different seasons. It consisted of 5x trips from Phoenix, AZ to Atlanta, GA in April, June, August, October and December. In total there was 16x full day productions in Ellijay, GA. We worked with a small crew and a mix of professional and amateur models. Each shoot day was focused on capturing lifestyle photo and video content within different categories; lodging, dining, shopping, wine & beer, outdoor recreation, and live events.

timeline

Despite the size of this project, the client moved fairly quickly in terms of getting budgets approved. From submitting our proposal to getting the contract signed took less than 2 weeks. From there we had 2 months before we would be packing our bags and traveling into the first production.

Production took 1 year and we rolled out some photo and video deliverables in between. After the last production we spent another 8 months finalizing deliverables, hiring voiceover talent, and adding to the original scope of work.

This particular project is a little different in that it had a lot of ongoing elements and different pieces that wouldn’t allow us to move forward without executing the next production.

deliverables

The deliverables included 3x 10-20 second website banners, 9x 45-60 second informational videos with voiceover, 9x 45 second montage videos, and 5x photo galleries with digital and print rights.

Distribution

Gilmer Chamber was in charge of distribution AND MARKETING ALL OF THE ASSETS WE CREATED. We collaborated with local Georgia TV stations to provide VIDEO content formatted for TV AND BROADCAST USE. OUR PHOTOS WERE USED TO COMPLETELY UPDATE THEIR WEBSITE, SOCIAL MEDIA, AND PRINT MATERIALS.