Styles of Chickasaw Country

Chickasaw Country, a tourism marketing organization, promotes attractions, businesses and restaurants within the Chickasaw Nation’s boundaries which includes 13 counties in south-central Oklahoma. The organization promotes this very diverse cultural destination year-round, engaging audiences of all ages from around the country.

CHALLENGE

Chickasaw Country sought to raise awareness of locally-owned, unique boutiques throughout the Chickasaw Country region. The brand desired to educate the drivable market about the interesting, locally-owned shopping locations that Chickasaw Country has to offer. Through those efforts, the audience would be encouraged to visit featured boutiques and explore the town in which the boutique is located, thereby increasing tourism for the region.

Additionally, the project required coordinating with the small businesses so that they could each see the inherent value of sharing their story through the Chickasaw Country brand. Each small business needed to agree to put in the time, effort and manpower to tell their story, or the campaign would lose its value. Sharing the genuine stories of business owners in the region was essential for cultivating connections between the businesses and the Chickasaw Country audience.

STRATEGY

Koch Comm addressed these challenges through the development of a campaign called Styles of Chickasaw Country. The campaign features a series of short videos highlighting the owners and their stories behind the locally owned boutiques in Chickasaw Country.

Video was the ideal way to create digestible content for web and social media. Video would bridge the gap to help viewers understand that Chickasaw Country is more than just 13 ordinary counties, and it could naturally and visually tell the stories of the people behind the boutiques. Each video in the series needed to instantly capture the attention of the audience while showcasing the store and telling the owner’s story. The stories told would captivate viewers in a way that would compel them to drive to visit the boutique and the surrounding tourism destinations. The campaign’s direction was inspired by travel shows and documentaries, bringing attention to the story, merchandise and uniqueness of each boutique.

To accomplish this, Koch Comm’s strategy involves initial work for each video including researching and pre-interviews with the businesses via email and phone, investigating the businesses’ websites, social media channels, online reviews and the surrounding attractions. From this information, Koch Comm weaves together a story angle for each video, generates ideas and compiles a shot list.

Capturing video in the wide variety of spaces and environments to create a cohesive aesthetic for the campaign is often challenging. The video shoots involve quick thinking and creativity to work with space, lighting and guiding each boutique’s spokesperson to be on camera. Each video includes the Chickasaw Country Travel Blogger interacting with the business owners to tell their story and aligning b-roll to each piece of the interview.

RESULTS

This ongoing campaign has been a success for Chickasaw Country and the boutiques featured and it has grown connections between the stores and the Chickasaw Country audience. The campaign has shown the impact of the boutiques in their respective communities and the uniqueness of Chickasaw Country as a tourism destination. For the White Feather Styles of Chickasaw Country video from November 2017 (shown above), impressions exceeded 100,000 on Facebook and the video view rate on Twitter was nearly 40 percent (39.08%).