The bright orange of the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset, cable cars climbing up steep hills, city lights over Alamo Square’s “Painted Ladies”, are all the images that stand out when one visualizes San Francisco, and these exactly are the ones that draw travelers to the Golden City after year, just like the travelers of All Over Trip.
As said by Lynn Bruni-Perkins, Vice President of Global Marketing Communications for the San Francisco Travel Association, and quoted by us, “San Francisco’s number one attribute based on consumer research is our scenic beauty, so sharing that beauty with potential visitors to inspire travel is a key part of our marketing strategy.”
The social media accounts of San Francisco Travel and their website are seen to be packed with colorful, and bright images, and it comes as no wonder that they made their way to the list of the best travel brands to follow back in 2017.
As said by Bruni-Perkins, she and her team on social media research see a major uptick in engagement when they are there using videos and photos versus just text. Longer time is spent by the website visitors on a page when it is visually engaging.
Said by Bruni-Perkins, and quoted by us, “Visual storytelling enables us to show the depth and breadth of what San Francisco has to offer in an emotional, visually arresting way.”
What is the Importance of Easy Access to Visual Content
Since visual assets are considered to be a crucial part of the San Francisco Travel Association’s marketing as well as public relations strategy, they require to be easy to find and use.
Again, quoted by us, “Making our visual content easily accessible to those who are creating content as well as media/journalists is key to managing the brand story,” said Bruni-Perkins.
PhotoShelter is used by Bruni-Perkins and her teams for storing and organizing their visual assets. The cloud-based media library then makes it easy for the stakeholders, media partners, and staff members to further find just the right visual asset for a project.
Furthermore, this also helps the San Francisco Travel team to keep up with their assets’ demands. Nearly 2000 downloads in the past 90 days have been seen in their media library.
Case Study: Summer of Love 2017
Catering to this process closely, let’s look at this case study.
San Francisco right now is celebrating the golden jubilee of the Summer of Love of 1967. A guide is created by The San Francisco Travel team for all of the psychedelic festivities, from the “On the Road to the Summer of Love” exhibit at the California Historical Society to the Volkswagen bus tours.
Whereas, as a part of their promotions, a gallery is also created by them of the archive images that are available to stakeholders, staff, and media partners.
All of the photos have relevant captions as well as keywords, so anyone who is there searching for a particular keyword can therefore quickly make a way in finding the perfect photo and anyone who is there using the photos can include the photo credit and the concept, both.
Making different ways for letting the photo easy to be found results in opening the door to a wide range of external storytelling, and internal storytelling opportunities.
When your visual assets are easily accessible, your external partners and team members can further find new and exciting ways for using them to tell the story of your brand.
Centralized Media Library, and Its Impact
While visual assets from staff members, social media, influencers, and photographers are been sourced by the San Francisco Travel Association, all of the photos and videos of the organization live in one centralized media library.
This then is critical since everyone who needs assets has one go-to place for looking for the files that are needed by them.
The organization of the library is by subject matter, so it becomes easy for browsing and see what then is available at a glance. If any local newspaper reporter is in a need of a photo for a story that delivers the food culture of San Francisco, they then can quickly make their navigation to the gallery of “Food and Drink”. Whereas, if a network television producer is there looking for a video clip for a story that delivers an uptick in travel to San Francisco, they can further go straight up to the “B-Roll” gallery.
With the relevant metadata, these assets are also tagged, so that a quick search could be run by the visitors for a keyword like “Gold Gate Bridge”, and they can make their further return to the range of results.
In conditions where everything is sorted in one well-organized location, there will be a reduction made by your team to the risk of losing assets and using the same assets again and again, just because these are easier to find.
Accessible, But Protected
While there is a need for many of the assets of the team to be made available to a wide range of stakeholders, they also start prioritizing security.
As said by Bruni-Perkins, and quoted by us, “We have spent a lot of money and time securing the best possible images of our destination’s icons and attributes.”
Watermarks are used by the team for ensuring their assets can’t further be used unless the people adhere to their usage guidelines.
And, while many of the galleries are there visible to the public, the team also caters to several private galleries that currently are only visible to the internal staff members.
Such security measures are there for helping the San Francisco team to control the story of their brand, and further protect their investment in visual content.
