A Brand Story:  Ross-Chillicothe, Ohio CVB

Chillicothe, Ohio is located in the heart of Ross County, Ohio, which is in the heart of Ohio itself. The Ross-Chillicothe CVB approached Chillicothe web design firm, Westside Media, in 2006 with an RFQ on becoming the CVB’s marketing arm. Brand Shepherd owner Dan Crask and Westside Media owners Stephen and Melissa Patrick are longtime friends, and Westside Media invited partnership where Westside Media would handle web work and help on strategy, and Brand Shepherd would handle brand identity, branded advertising and visitor guide responsibilities (among other branded touch points). We, Brand Shepherd, agreed whole heartedly, and a 3+ year relationship was born. What we created for and with the CVB has turned out to be one of the most well-developed destination brands in all of Ohio.

Brand Identity and Tag Line

Since we were starting over for the CVB’s branding, we created a wide range of initial ideas. The first round of logo concepts were many – over a dozen to start. From those ideas we narrowed ideas down to 2, and from those down to 1. We worked on the logo’s structure to get it just right, and once that was complete we spent an afternoon with the CVB working through color options. We also developed a set of possible tag lines that we could use to help build the CVB brand. Again, starting with a wide range of ideas we narrowed it down to “Where To Be!” as the tag line for Ross-Chillicothe, Ohio. The idea was twofold: First, it was a positive statement, that this area had much more to offer than regional tourists might have thought, and secondly, we could build out sub-brand messages from the “Where To Be!” message: “Where To Dine… Where To Shop… Where to Relax… etc.” The time we spent up front on developing the brand identity, colors, fonts, and tag line has paid off thoroughly – this CVB’s branding is among the strongest in the entire state of Ohio.

Branded Advertising

Once the logo and tag line were created they needed a home environment. Like we do with all of our branding projects we set out to create a live-use branded deliverable, and so we began developing ads for the CVB. We initially developed several options of design and flow, but the style was quite evident given how much time we had put into developing what the identity needed to be. From there we designed ads for Ohio Magazine, Over The Back Fence Magazine, Reader’s Digest, and many, many more fine publications.

Yearly Visitor Guide

Every year CVBs put out a visitor guide that sums up all the attractions, events, places to stay, eat, and shop for the areas they represent. This is a very demanding process because it has to work in tandem with all other branded touch points (that is, if the CVB cares about its image and brand…many, sadly, do not). We helped produce 3 visitor guides, working with various sources for selling ads, commercial printing, distribution, and designing a visitor guide each year that stood out. For 2010′s guide we visited several Ohio travel pavilions (rest areas) along interstates to check out the highest concentration of competing literature. We used that research to design a visitor guide that was very, very clean in appearance compared to other places around the state. Brand Shepherd worked directly with each commercial printer as well to ensure that the guides were printed to the best quality and delivered on time.

Email Marketing Design

Since email marketing is a very inexpensive method of staying in front of influencers such as travel planners and coordinators, as well as visitors, we created a few different email marketing templates that the CVB staff can update with coming events and attractions.

Trade Show Booth Graphics

CVB staff attend many travel shows, and the Ross-Chillicothe CVB is no exception. We created 2 branded, vibrant “banner stands” that can be used in a variety of ways – from flanking a booth at a trade show, or inside the CVB offices to give more branded flavor to the office.

Web Site

As we said at the beginning, it was our longtime friends at Westside Media who asked us to partner with them to be the CVB’s marketing arm, and we are grateful for the experience of building such a strong brand. Westside Media is responsible for the Ross-Chillicothe CVB web site, which is dynamic in the information it provides visitors, is totally on-brand, and also allows the CVB to sell advertising space to help area businesses.