Experience Central Avenue
Visual Creative Strategist
Executive Producer
In early 2018, one of my favorite clients - Visit St. Pete/Clearwater - came to us with a need: get visitors to step off the sand! Their desire was to create a visually immersive digital experience for potential visitors to explore the Central Avenue district in downtown St. Pete.
St. Pete/Clearwater is best known for its award-winning beaches, but it found that visitors often didn't know about its world-renowned arts, culture or culinary experiences. And the Central Avenue district was the perfect highlight of all this and more. The challenge was how to capture the wide variety of activities in a multi-media experience online. Working with the our team's Digital Content Strategist, we dove into the opportunity.
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The first step was one so often missed in projects - a scout. But more than a scout, this was an exploration. After some prelim research and conversations with the client, we headed to Central Avenue and... walked. And talked. We talked to business owners and locals and visitors. We asked what they loved about the district, what made it special, what are the stories that need to be told, and more. The conversations were so authentic and telling - and led to us finding most of the people we highlighted in video, designs we wanted to implement and tidbits to include.
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With a content plan forming, we next looked at the array of options for visual storytelling. Animations, exploratory videos, short reels, photography and more. We wanted to use all of it to immerse people in the stories and increase their desire to visit Central Ave.
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In the original digital experience, users explored 'chapters' like Art, Pet Friendly, Nightlife, Culinary & Funky Fun Finds. Each chapter then had a variety of 'story blocks' that immersed them in the stories related to that theme - with each block using a different visual element. In total, we created over 100 pieces of content with over 40 video assets in 6-8 weeks.
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Within the first three months from the launch of ExperienceCentralAve.com, engagement with the content was surpassing expectations:
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Of the new visitors to the site in this period, 25.4% returned to the site
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Those returning new visitors were also spending 28% more time on site
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And new site visitors also had a impressively low 29.3% bounce rate!
Check out the current ExperienceCentralAve​!