LINK TO VISITORS GUIDE: https://www.bluetoad.com/publication/?m=44342&i=734830&p=1&pre=1&ver=html5
Each year the Warren County Convention & Visitors Bureau (WCCVB) produces the Ohio’s Largest Playground Visitors Guide – a 44-page print and digital publication packed full of fun and insightful tourism information for prospective Warren County visitors. While the WCCVB has produced some iteration of its guide for decades now, the bureau’s 2022 edition – and the process that went into producing it – was perhaps more creative and hands-on than ever before.
When kicking off production of the guide in late 2021, the WCCVB had two primary goals in mind:
The first, having rolled out similar iterations of the guide each of the previous two years, was to refresh the publication significantly from an aesthetic standpoint.
The second, facing a still uncertain travel climate and COVID-19-related budget restraints, was to bring as much of the guide’s production in-house as possible.
With that first goal in mind, the WCCVB commissioned a sketch artist and graphic designer to produce custom illustrations of 24 of Warren County’s most prominent tourist attractions. Those illustrations were hand-drawn in pencil (using real-life images as inspiration) before being colorized and eventually digitized to create both a brand-new front cover collage and interior map for the 2022 guide.
The remaining features of the guide were then all produced entirely in-house by the WCCVB marketing team. Not only did the WCCVB staff write all the copy within the publication, but it also sourced the photography, organized the layout, designed many additional graphic elements, and managed the promotion and sales of the publication’s 20+ advertisements. While effortful and time-consuming, producing so much of the publication in-house not only saved the WCCVB important marketing dollars, but gave it more control over the creative process than ever before.
Ultimately, the WCCVB successfully produced an attractive and easy-to-use visitors guide which wholly embraced Warren County’s “Ohio’s Largest Playground” brand both visually and contextually. The new illustrated cover and map gave the guide a refreshed, eye-catching look that emphasized Warren County’s enormous array of events and attractions, while fresh photography, insightful editorial and well-organized business listings made the guide both an effective trip planning tool and fun on-the-road read for Warren County visitors.
The 2022 Ohio’s Largest Playground Visitors Guide has proven to the be among the WCCVB’s most successful marketing publications to-date. Hard copies of the guide have been requested by potential visitors in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Canada, and have also been distributed in bulk to AAA offices, hotels, rest stops, shopping centers and more popular tourist stops throughout the WCCVB’s various target markets. While final end-of-year numbers are, of course, unavailable at this time, the 2022 guide is currently on pace to set an all-time WCCVB record for digital views. Many of the new graphic elements originally created for the guide (including the 24 attraction illustrations featured on its cover) have also been repurposed to produce an entirely new collection of digital, print and video creative assets.
