Discover lake county

Situation

Lake County offers an expansive range of ecosystems and experiences within one large, driveable area full of–you guessed it–lakes! They faced significant competition as a top-of-mind destination in Florida, despite their spectacular but approachable outdoor experiences, beautiful non-beach waterfront access, family-friendly environments, and small-town charm. They wanted to evolve and refresh their tourism brand, so that’s exactly what we did.

Approach

Our tactic and main mission: elevating awareness of Lake County and all the treasures they have to offer. We gained first-hand knowledge of the traveler experience there through a full destination immersion. Then, we gathered extensive research through surveys, focus groups, and interviews with leisure travelers in key markets who were both familiar and unfamiliar with Lake County. We looked at their audiences, from among Visit Lake’s owned channels, such as social media accounts and newsletter subscribers to various community stakeholders. We sought to better understand the current perception of Lake County as a leisure travel destination, the desires people had for when they were planning leisure travel to Florida, and what their community valued and wanted to convey to those considering travel to the area. We combined these efforts with the learnings from a creative workshop with staff to explore the current brand, as well as through a robust brand perception workshop.

Our creative team took it from there, designing a vibrant new logo, tagline, typography, style guide, brand essence, and marketing campaign concepts. A photo and video shoot were conducted in-market to establish fresh assets for Lake County’s tourism office, which is what primarily informed the brand identity process. From there, we continued with primary campaign development which was tested by two leisure travel focus groups. The ever-so inviting “Immerse Yourself” campaign was born from those results and was incredibly well received.