What do you do when nobody’s having any fun?
Call the authorities.
The Central Pennsylvania Convention and Visitors Bureau had a problem: people just don’t take vacations like they used to. More and more Americans feel like we can’t spare the time or the cash to take a trip these days. (And when travel ads always promise the same bland, boring thing… can you really blame them?) If you want to get away from the same old getaway, you have to be bold. Different. Unique. So we developed a new identity that would really put Centre County, PA on the map, and a campaign that was funny and unexpected enough to entice everybody to hit the road.
The Adventure Begins
The CPCVB needed a name to do them justice – something to stand out from everybody else. Because there’s nothing fun about sounding like everybody else. And the folks in Happy Valley are dead serious about fun. So that’s where we started. We played up that juxtaposition, of being fun and serious, wild and bureaucratic all at once. And the result was an identity that felt less like a CVB, and more like Candyland during the Eisenhower Administration. And with that the Happy Valley Adventure Bureau was born.
Bang. Pow. Zoom.
Ever notice that travel ads all tend to look alike? Warm colors. Pretty photos of smiling families and rolling horizons. Everybody’s grinning at each other while they eat but never actually, ya know, eating anything? It’s all pretty dull. So we pulled our inspiration from somewhere a little more adventurous: Silver Age comic book covers. We developed a wild and colorful illustration campaign – depicting not just the places you can visit… but the adventures you experience while you’re there. The result is a look and feel entirely its own.
PTGo
Look to your left. Okay, now look to your right. Now look behind you. And look at yourself. Statistically speaking, one of you isn’t going to use all of your PTO this year. We think that’s bonkers. So we created PTGo, where friends and colleagues can nominate one another for a trip to Happy Valley.
We asked A&G to make us something unexpected, and that’s exactly what they did. I was a little nervous at first, it’s so different from everything else out there. But that’s how you stand out. We’re so proud we took the leap.
Fritz Smith CEO