“Life In SOVA” was developed as a way to highlight the region’s charm and resilience as they overcame the unique rural challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Brand
Identity
This campaign showcases our expertise in creating compelling regional destination brands that celebrate local communities and unite them through storytelling.
Video Production
Our vignette-style videos capture the essence of the people and small towns who make this region special.
Content Creation
New commercial photography and short-form videos help showcase the walkable downtown, hand-crafted goods, farmers markets; live music, and outdoor recreation.
Website
As part of the campaign, an accompanying website was created to house the videos and as a platform for future community storytelling.
Community Participation
A committee of hardworking tourism and economic development leaders from across the four-county region participated in helping craft the strategy.
Destination by Design partnered with the West Piedmont Planning District Commission to create “Life in SoVA,” a regional brand and campaign uniting Virginia’s Western Piedmont region. Developed to highlight the area’s charm and resilience through the unique challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, the project included logo and visual identity design, vignette-style video production, and a dedicated website showcasing the region’s walkable downtowns, farmers markets, and outdoor recreation.
In Virginia, community branding and destination marketing come together especially well for multi-county regions looking to tell one cohesive story across several small towns. Life in SoVA reflects that pairing, using short-form commercial video and photography to capture hand-crafted goods, live music, and local culture across the four-county region, then housing that content on a dedicated website built for ongoing community storytelling.
A shared regional brand can help a group of small towns present a united front to visitors and investors alike, especially after a shared hardship. Life in SoVA was built on that idea, developed in the wake of COVID-19 to spotlight the region’s resilience, with a committee of tourism and economic development leaders from across the four counties helping craft the strategy and ensure the brand reflected real community character.
Community branding is the process of developing a visual identity, video content, and messaging strategy that unites a place, or in this case an entire multi-county region, around a shared story. For SoVA, that meant a badge mark, state mark, and primary logo lockup paired with vignette-style videos capturing the people and small towns that make the region distinct, all supporting a broader campaign of regional storytelling.
SoVA refers to Virginia’s Western Piedmont region, a four-county area in Southern Virginia known for its walkable small-town downtowns, rural landscapes, and agricultural heritage. The region’s rural character and tight-knit communities were central to the Life in SoVA campaign, which set out to showcase the resilience and everyday charm of towns that don’t always get the tourism spotlight of Virginia’s larger cities.
