ASHEVILLE – This week’s onslaught of cameras aren’t working for some L.A. studio; they’re working for us.
The crews you see around town are filming new TV spots that will advertise Asheville to potential visitors online and in nine regional markets: Atlanta, Raleigh, Charlotte, Greensboro, Knoxville, Columbia, Charleston, Cincinnati and Nashville.
Their efforts will produce 15- and 30-second commercials plus a long-form Youtube video. Altogether, they’ll film at more than 20 locations in the Asheville area.
The cameras have already been to downtown restaurants, the River Arts District and Lexington Avenue Glass, and the schedule for Wednesday takes them to Biltmore and Wall Street.
The Asheville Convention and Visitors Bureau is producing the commercial, and last week, the group created photography for a print campaign that will correspond with the TV and digital push.
“The aim is to be able to show the grandeur and vibrancy of this destination and what makes it so special and create that aspirational desire for visitation,” said Marla Tambellini, deputy director of the CVB. “It’s more about the moment, capturing a moment that visitors to our community have.”
The ad materials correspond to a new tagline that the CVB announced in October: “Asheville: Discovery, inside and out.”
The last time the CVB shot TV spots about three years ago, they matched the “Asheville’s calling” tagline, Tambellini said.
The videos will include about 150 locals, some of which were paid as extras.
The imagery is set to music by local band River Whyless, which released a new self-titled EP in January. The song in the commercials isn’t actually on the EP, however. It’s a variation on a song that the band will use specifically for the campaign.
“The music itself informs the tone and tenor of the video, and the idea about discovery inside and out is woven in there,” Tambellini said.
The CVB will release the new commercials at the end of July, and they will air starting in August. Since the ads won’t be used in local media (they’re for tourism), Asheville residents will have to go online to see them. They’ll be available through Youtube and the CVB website.
A print campaign will launch around the same time, but Tambellini said video is the best medium for Asheville. “The diversity of experiences in Asheville is harder to tell in print and can be conveyed much easier in video format,” she said. “We have that opportunity to convey a variety of experiences as well as create that desire and showcase the beauty and the vibrancy and all the attributes of this area in video.”
The new creative campaign costs $590,000 for video, photography, post-production and other associated costs.
Last summer, the CVB hired Peter Mayer, a public relations firm based in New Orleans, to spearhead its PR efforts, which caused some controversy because a local group was not contracted.
The filming revived some of that ire on the Asheville Politics Facebook page.
The CVB is part of the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce, and it is funded by a contract with the Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority, which manages the revenue from the 4 percent hotel occupancy tax.
That tax could increase to 6 percent if a bill in the North Carolina House of Representatives approves the change. It received Senate approval on Monday in a 42-5 vote.
The Occupancy Tax Fund has a budget of $10,408,699 in this fiscal year.
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