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Making Of

Livability in Virginia's New River Valley

Showcasing Why WE Love This Region

5,587 website visits and 297,404 video views in one month, reaching nearly half a million people.

Working alongside staff from Onward NRV, our team collaboratively developed multimedia assets for a campaign that showcases the New River Valley and promotes the many reasons to live and work in the area.

During their one-month campaign, these assets helped bring awareness, engagement, and business advocacy well beyond the region. Part of a five-year strategic plan, the campaign generated 5,587 website visits and 297,404 video views in one month’s time, and reached nearly half a million users.

While this project and narrative model could be adapted for many other places, work like this is important to us because we’re close to it. We live and work here and truly wanted to show off why we love it. These videos will be useful for years to come, online, at events, in advertising, and more. Producing content like this is a long-term investment for marketing success.

Locations and collaborators

Each host location met our crew and project collaborators with open arms. Work like this truly takes a village: our team handles the coordination, narrative development, model recruitment, and production, with help from municipalities and businesses throughout the region.

Special considerations

The main difficulty with this project was simply the number of moving parts. Organizing this many shoots with multiple models and everyone’s schedules is always a challenge. We don’t have the ability to put everything else on hold and film for days at a time, nor would that work with our collaborators.

It’s tough to organize the many aspects of a project like this with a small team. Work like this requires communication and processes in place. Those didn’t come quickly or easily for our team. They’re something we’ve developed over time.

Client
Onward NRV
Project type
Video & Campaign
What we did
  • Video production
  • Vertical social video
  • Photography
  • Drone footage
  • Motion graphics and logo bumpers
  • Coordination and model recruitment

Team members

  • Luke Brugh

    Director, Lead Videographer

    Luke took the lead on the filming and editing of this project. He was in charge of the set design and leaned on the rest of our team when he needed support.

  • Devon Arnold

    Assistant Videography, Drone Operator

    Devon operated camera equipment at each location and took on the bulk of the b-roll and drone duties. She also produced the vertical video for this project and helped produce custom graphics and logo bumpers.

  • Cody Thompson

    Project Manager

    Cody organized filming dates, coordinated with small businesses, and ran all the logistics for this project. This is a key differentiator for Aspire: we are adept at planning and executing projects without much input from our customers.

  • Jonathan Roberts

    Lead Photographer, Behind-the-Scenes

    Jonathan produced the still photography for this project. Capturing content at each event as well as filming behind-the-scenes content, he produced media throughout this project.

Partners

The many counties, cities, and towns in our region are always open to collaborations. Many thanks to those who welcomed us in for this project.

  • Town of Blacksburg
  • Town of Christiansburg
  • Floyd County
  • Giles County
  • Pulaski County
  • Montgomery County
  • Radford City
  • Christiansburg Run Club
  • Lichen or Knot Plant Company
  • Iron for Zion
  • Iron Tree Brewing Company
  • Patrick Enterprises
  • Troika Contemporary Crafts
  • Twisted Liquid
  • The Highlander Hotel
  • Red Sun Farms
  • Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center

Delivery and support

In addition to the video deliverables, our team captured stills during each event, as well as during some b-roll shoots with individuals and businesses.

Horizontal videos, vertical videos for social media, and still photography were all packaged and delivered to our client. We also put together supplemental files for thumbnails and captions to make distribution easier on the Onward staff. Delivering quality assets throughout the whole process is crucial to success.

Lessons learned

Typical logistical challenges came up. Even so, this project ran very smoothly because of the clear communication between the Aspire team and Onward NRV representatives.

In our region, this project was possible because of our existing network and connections here. We'll consider carefully any project of this scale in other places. Without a lot of eager collaborators, something like this wouldn't be nearly as successful.

From the project

  • Aerial view of a suburban neighborhood with houses, trees, lawns and paved streets, some roofs with solar panels
  • Two people seated at a table with potted plants being filmed by a crew with professional equipment in a cozy indoor space
  • A man assembling or repairing a drone with exposed wiring on a wooden table
  • A woman in a black sleeveless top creating a fog effect with dry ice in a tall curved glass behind a bar counter
  • A man in a gray hoodie and baseball cap standing next to a weightlifting barbell on a blue squat rack in a gym
  • A man in blue shoe covers kneeling in a greenhouse, harvesting tomatoes from a vine
  • A scientist in a white lab coat and blue gloves using a pipette in a laboratory with glassware holding orange and blue liquids
  • A smiling woman sitting at a bar with two glasses of beer, one with an Iron Tree Brewing Company label
  • A man with long curly hair and a woman with straight brown hair sharing a bright red cocktail with garnishes at a bar

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