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 It’s a rallying cry to shift the narrative, challenge outdated perceptions, and spotlight San Francisco as a city where innovation, diversity, creativity, and reinvention converge.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 creative direction on the marketing pieces for this campaign, ranging from storyboarding and diverse talent casting in videos to coaching layout on convention booths to writing copy for print and web advertisements. The work features stunning imagery with inspirational copy designed to stir aspiration and motivate travel to our destination.

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 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.

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.

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.