Charles Rubinoff

Overview

“Believe in San Francisco” is a brand campaign made to reintroduce San Francisco not just as a destination, but as a belief in possibility. It’s a rallying cry to shift the narrative, challenge outdated perceptions, and spotlight San Francisco as a city where innovation, diversity, creativity, and reinvention converge.

With a concept set, I led the art direction on the marketing pieces for this campaign, ranging from storyboarding and diverse talent casting in videos to designing and writing copy for print and web advertisements to coaching layout on convention display booths. The work features stunning imagery with inspirational copy designed to stir aspiration and motivate travel to our destination.

The theme had to remain consistent enough to carry across a variety of formats, yet remain flexible to accommodate the particular demands of video, digital ads, OOH, and display booths. 

This campaign has two target audiences—essentially the B2C and B2B crowds—and has pieces tailored to each. My team and I heavily collaborated with other departments to ensure we were aligned on messaging and imagery. 

Background

The previous brand campaign, Always San Francisco, was getting stale, no longer sending the right message at the right time to the right audience, and leadership agreed it was time for something new. We evaluated our current situation and opportunity to move forward with something new that aligned with our mission, brand, and environment.

Goal

The goal of the campaign is to reinforce the brand and promote an optimistic narrative about San Francisco in order to drive visitation to the city.

Challenges

The business challenge was the narrative around San Francisco was in a rough place given the bad-faith coverage and irresistible click-bait around social media that did not accurately reflect the city. We wanted to show the San Francisco that countless visitors raved about and elicit that same feeling in those who haven’t visited yet or in some time to increase visitation, both for leisure and business.

The design challenge was, first, to visually communicate this messaging goal effectively, but also this was a new campaign and everything had to be created, there wasn’t precedent for any particular print or digital piece. But that challenge was also an opportunity.

Solution

We partnered with a long-time partner creative agency, Teak, to develop two campaign videos—one aimed at the leisure audience, the other at business—and help us refine the concept of this campaign based on the goals and feedback developed internally.

I wanted this campaign to align with our existing brand as it wasn’t a refresh, but feature a shift in the both the tone of messaging and the presentation of marketing to it distinct. That meant a narrative that’s decidedly optimistic and inspirational, and a new on-brand look-and-feel featuring edge-to-edge arresting photos with simple white copy and logos atop it to led the imagery shine.

I kept these elements consistent so a thread connected every piece, but also explored how I could best tell our story with each format. While print couldn’t display the amazing video content we captured, it did allow for a greater impact with our best product (San Francisco) photography. The grand scale of convention trade show booths allowed for stunning photos to catch attendees from across a hall, but I had to be mindful of the folks and tables that may obscure the bottom portion.

Impact

This campaign was seen around the world from a national broadcast domestically to OOH advertisements internationally. This results are still incoming and we’re proud of the strong showing so far. 

Learnings

One important lesson related to production reminded us to carefully consider the priority of self-imposed deadlines vs rushing along a project We missed the mark on this initially which led to added costs on video production. Thankfully, however, we ended up with a much stronger product.

The leisure video also reminded us to continue embracing serendipity as one particular scene in it—featuring a somewhat scandalous swing—led to some great press and increased engagement in an ad that’s been broadcast on television across the country.