The mission of the Henderson County Tourism Development Authority (TDA) is to promote travel to Henderson County for the economic benefit of all.

The TDA put out an RFP for creative services needed to accomplish the recommendations derived from the Strategic Plan that was developed following Henderson County’s 2013 Tourism Research Study. Next step would be to take Hendersonville’s new brand and create research driven and consistent messaging through the execution of a marketing plan.

Scope of Work
Henderson County TDA wanted to employ an outside creative agency as their Agency of Record for the following deliverables to enable Hendersonville to stand out in the tourism marketplace:

• Provide an overall evaluation of new brand, tagline, graphic design, and overall current marketing efforts
• Audit the current media plan and make recommendations
• Develop an annual Strategic Marketing Plan encompassing all forms of advertising
• Create a Public Relations Plan including general approach, goals, and strategies
• Guide the development of a new tourism website
• Develop four seasonal advertising campaigns
• Create a plan to integrate more digital marketing into Marketing Plan
• Take over social media management

Storypowered was chosen for their brave original work examples, strong team talent, deep digital experience, and reputation.

Towns and cities are increasingly competing with other places for investment, talent, attention, visitors, shoppers, events, and the like. The advent of technological advances has raised the stakes for most small towns in competing on what in many cases has become a national arena. Add to that the protracted economic downturn; its impact on WNC real estate investment, the general psyche of the public in defensive mode, and the necessity of a strategically right town brand driving a tactical marketing plan with clear, effective messaging, was vitally important.

With Hendersonville, we needed to maintain the heritage, culture, essence, and feeling of the town while transforming the narrative, logo, and quality of the print media into a more contemporary present-day lifestyle brand with one voice. With the shadow of Asheville as a hip town, it was important that Hendersonville capitalized on being its own destination as well as a basecamp to explore the western Carolina mountains. This would take much more than a logo refresh or a catchy tagline. Success for Henderson County as an attractive destination needed to be built on the solid foundation of a unifying brand strategy that would include product and experience delivery.