Inside Scoop – Behind the Making of 365 Extraordinary Days in Oregon

April 10, 2007

By Mo Sherifdeen

What does it take to build a visual mosaic of 365 Extraordinary Days in Oregon?
Coffee, sugar, lost sleep and an army of dedicated and enthusiastic staff, partners and vendors!

The Travel Oregon (TO) office has been buzzing with excitement over the past month-and-a-half as we got ready to take “365” live on April 1. Our “east” conference room in Salem was transformed into a campaign style war room—stacks of event listings were strewn over the floors, the walls were adorned with design “comps,” and a full-time temp hammered away on a Mac and a PC (ok, not simultaneously) trying to get the events identified by the campaign into our web database.

And all across the state, our partners scurried to get us lists of ideas for events and things to do. Meanwhile in Portland, teams at Wieden+Kennedy (lead/ad agency), opus:creative (web agency), and eROI (e-marketing agency) were diligently working away on the vital components of what’s since been called “one of the best client/agency collaborations I have ever worked on” by Ken Smith, our Account Director at Wieden+Kennedy.

Welcome to 365 Extraordinary Days in Oregon!

Conception: It all started at an inconspicuous fifth floor meeting at the cavernous Pearl District offices of our ad agency Wieden+Kennedy (w+k) in early February. Our account team at w+k (Ken Smith, Denise De Grand & Meghan Pruitt) presented us with the brilliant concept of building an evocative “mosaic style” calendar that gives you a daily glimpse into this zany and wonderful place we call "Oregon." Everyday, we'd highlight a different event or thing to do in the state and then tell you about the event and how to get there and what else you can do in the area.


Goal: The goal of this campaign was simple: drive traffic to our flagship site TravelOregon.com. As communicators living in the digital medium, our challenge is to tell you about this great state that we live, work and play in a visually engaging and compelling manner. TravelOregon.com is of course a great start. It’s a viscerally engaging experience that combines the romance of Oregon with tons (more than 6,000 pages) of information—on everything from how to find public art in downtown Portland to the obscure "Crack in the Ground" in Christmas Valley—in addition to planning tools.

But how do we get YOU to TravelOregon.com and allow you to discover the hidden gems of Oregon? This is the challenge that gave birth to our campaign, “365 Extraordinary Days in Oregon”.

Process: All we had to do now was to figure out 365 different things to do in Oregon, keeping in mind that they had to be equally representative of the entire state and our key niches (outdoor recreation, culture & history, arts etc.). We also had to ensure that everything was figured out and produced and live by April 1!


As you can imagine, the most daunting and time consuming task was collecting the actual events and things to do and laying them out on a day-by-day basis, building a "house of cards" if you will. The minute we found out a certain event had to move or wasn't appropriate for the campaign (no offense Miss. White Trash Contest), the entire deck had to be reshuffled and rebuilt again! And invariably, this led us to perform various regional and niche balancing acts that involved almost everyone on the wk and TO team. The photo you see here is a picture of the studio wall at w+k where the physical events/things to do were laid out.

Here is a week-by-week snapshot from my notes of how we accomplished this project:


Week 0 (2/19 – 2/23)
– The initial list was prepared by w+k team scouring the web and our event calendars for ideas (they worked all weekend on this one!)

-Travel Oregon reached out to partners (see credits below) for more calendar ideas; we also engaged our own Amy to map out these events using pushpins on a state map.


Week 1 (2/26 – 3/2)
-We approved the initial list of calendar items; w+k was now free to go into production!

-Travel Oregon Interactive team (Ashley, our temp Bryant and yours truly), started the process of inputting events into our web database

-w+k and opus:creative had initial talks about tracking and analysis for the campaign

-Our partners started sending calendar ideas in to staff

Week 3 (3/12 – 3/16)
-TO sent w+k more recommendations compiled from staff and partner recommendations

-w+k sent TO “enhanced” list of 2007 events (woo hoo!) – 365 List #3

-Ashley and Bryant began the arduous task of comparing and contrasting List #2 and List #3 while entering events into site

-Each event listing was double checked and URL’s sent to w+k for input into web


Week 4 & 5 (3/19 – 3/30)
-TO sent w+k “final-final” calendar item list for 2007 events (woo hoo!) – 365 List #4

-Final compare and contrast performed; all items were triple checked for accuracy and editorial overview by Mo and Ashley

-URLs for each sent to w+k

-Banners for third party sites produced

-365 beta site up

-E-mail tools produced; analytics set

-Site went live on April 1!

Check out the final results at www.TravelOregon.com/365 and you too will see that there indeed is something magical happening in Oregon, every single day.

Finally, I’d also like to thank for the following individuals and partners for their fantastic work on this campaign…..

Wieden+Kennedy
Ken Smith
Denise DeGrand (I love those 10:30 pm e-mail chats!)
Meghan Pruitt (365 Queen)
Brian Mork
Laura Caldwell
Natalie Montgomery
Loren Boggs
Melissa Clayton Tydlaska
Leah Jacobson
Laurie Litonjua
Patty Fogarty
Ginger Robinson
Mathew Foster
Laurie Brown
Lisa Osbourne (rock star media buyer)

eROI
Dylan Boyd
Jason Love
Julie McCreery (production)
Tore Gustafson (custom coding)

opus:creative
Gretchen Miner
Paul Wille (analytics guru)
Todd Jetton
Rich Joslin (programmer extraordinaire)

Partners
Portland Oregon Visitors Association (www.TravelPortland.com)
Willamette Valley Visitors Association (www.OregonWineCountry.org)
Mt. Hood Territory and Hood/Gorge team (www.MtHoodTerritory.com and www.MtHoodGorge.com)
Eastern Oregon Visitors Association (www.eova.com)
Oregon Coast Visitor Association (www.VisitTheOregonCoast.com)
Central Oregon Visitor Association (www.VisitCentralOregon.com)
Southern Oregon Visitors Association (www.sova.org)

Last but not least…my Travel Oregon teammates
Todd Davidson (CEO)
Kevin Wright (Dir. Of marketing)
Holly Macfee (Dir. Brand Strategy)
Ashley Moran (our trusty Interactive editor, without whom I’d be lost!)
Bryant Marban (temp/intern who rocked on production)
Amy Nyberg (map and niche queen)
Michelle Godfrey (Get The Word Out!)
Plus Chris Chester, Jennifer Archer, Gloria Zacharias, Scott West, Carina Reed and Carole Astley for the excellent ideas and suggestions on things to do/places to go for Eastern, Central and S. Coast.

-Mo Sherifdeen
Interactive Marketing Manager

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Comments (2)

nickie:

What an amazing feat! What I want to see is a picture of you all the night before it went live. Or were those too non-PC to put up on the blog?

Great campaign!

Posted by nickie | April 11, 2007 12:33 PM

D Porter:

A Threat to Oregon Tourism.

I appreciate the push to reach visitors thru the internet and news media rather than using outdoor advertising. This is a remarkable effort.

Please recommend to your members to refrain from using billboards to advertise their businesses. What they don't realize is that the proliferation of billboards along Oregon highways is detracting from Oregon's fabled scenic natural and pastoral landscapes. Outstanding scenery is one of the main attractions to draw tourists to Oregon. There is currently a push by out-of-state outdoor advertising companies to install as many new billboards as possible before Oregonians "Wake-up". Let's not be a part of the problem. Push for state-wide legislation to limit or eliminate billboards on Oregons scenic highways.

Posted by D Porter | April 22, 2007 1:28 PM

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