Creative Ad Designs | Visit Philly Marketing Campaigns

About the Organization

VISIT PHILADELPHIA is not only the organization name that hired us to assist with marketing materials and creative ad designs, but also “Visit Philadelphia” is Visits Philly’s mission in just two succinct words. They are the region’s official tourism marketing agency that collaboratively builds Greater Philadelphia’s brand image, drives visitation, and boosts the economy in this city.

VISIT PHILADELPHIA strives to increase the number of visitors, the number of nights visitors will feel inclined to stay in Philly, and the range of activities the visitor may feel inclined to explore. Visit Philly’s marketing efforts also strives to enhance the quality of life and sense of pride for residents of Philadelphia. 

Creative Repute offered extra assistance to VISIT PHILADELPHIA’s in-house communications and marketing team by collaboratively helping to design campaigns, media relations, advertisements, and social media posts while Visit Philly worked to hire and grow their internal team further. As an agency whose team members are mostly from Philadelphia or have moved to Philadelphia, we shared the mutual desire for people to feel as though they know Philadelphia as a destination through the deliverables we provided. 

VISIT PHILADELPHIA was founded in 1996 as the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation (GPTMC) by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the City of Philadelphia, and The Pew Charitable Trusts.

In 1998, House Bill 2858, Act 174 designated VISIT PHILADELPHIA, then GPTMC, to serve as the official Regional Attractions Marketing Agency.

About the Project

Creative Repute was hired to assist Visit Philly’s growing requests by reformatting previously created ads in various sizes. Then we created a series of new ads for Visit Philly’s holiday and cultural promotions.

Fast turnaround times, steady communication, and a wide range of design options for each deliverable were met. Creative Repute used Visit Philly’s database of archival photos instead of stock photos at every relevant opportunity so that our designs could remain specific to Philadelphia.

Visit Philly not only promotes tourism and attracts new visitors to Philadelphia, but also promotes businesses and events in Philadelphia to people that are already in love with this city. Much of Creative Repute’s collaboration with Visit Philly focused on awareness and pride for people already in Philadelphia. We focused on featuring local landmarks recognizable to people familiar with the area, such as the annual fireworks at Penns Landing and the Christmas Tree that lights City Hall each year.

Our Approach to Creative Ad Designs

Creative Repute began the process with an all-hands-in meeting with the Visit Philly marketing team to assess what measure would make this project successful. We were provided with a spreadsheet outlining the specs for each ad, as well as the deadline and additional necessary files. Creative Repute continued to meet with the client weekly to collect feedback and gather or provide updates. 

Creative Repute pulled creatives from our bench depending on each new project’s needs and how well each task’s guidelines paired with each specialist. An Art Director, a Project Manager, two Copywriters, and two Graphic Designers consistently saw work through to completion. For each deliverable needed, Creative Repute internally narrowed down 4 options (2 per designer) to present to the Visit Philly team. The reason for this many options was to give Visit Philly optional designs in the style they were familiar with and that maintained consistency with their past successes, and be creative and offer some out-of-the-box options for consideration. Visit Philly expressed a desire for new designs to follow the guidelines they laid out for creative work, but they also wanted to welcome and consider new ideas. The four options per deliverable were Creative Repute’s way of providing the client with a range of options to consider. 

Once the designs were created, an internal Creative Repute meeting was held that included two Graphic Designers, the Project Manager, a Copywriter (as needed), and an Art Director. Amongst the considerations that were under evaluation were overall layout, photo selection, and color choices. The goal of the discussions was to make sure the message of the creative ad designs were easily understood by the desired audience. 

In one example, Creative Repute provided multiple ads for Black-owned businesses in Philadelphia: It was important that we centered the business owner or offerings so that it could stand alone as a clear entity, whereas in another ad group we needed to highlight a long list of Black-owned businesses and have it displayed as a maximalist illustration.

The Creative Repute Team also created ads for Valentine’s day, the Chinese New Year, Christmas, and Black History Month. We played with witty catchphrases and standard holiday greetings in copywriting sessions. We ensured imagery was appropriate and inclusive in the creative ad designs. 

For Valentine’s day, we intentionally showcased more than cisgender, heterosexual, same-race relationships. For the Chinese New Year, we made sure to maintain cultural competency while also ensuring the festival felt welcoming to a wide range of backgrounds. When diversity wasn’t possible, we used symbols and colors as imagery in the ads instead of photos.

Once the internal team signed off on the top four designs, we submitted the designs to the Visit Philly team for additional feedback or finalization of designs. 

Working with Visit Philly was a great experience for the Creative Repute team because the projects we typically work on are larger projects that require a longer work period and so it was a nice change of pace to work on several smaller projects in a shorter time period. We were glad to provide Visit Philly with the design help they needed and also to call attention to exciting attractions in the city of Philadelphia.