To elevate North Carolina as the Great Trails State and power the Year of the Trail campaign, DbD delivered an integrated program: brand strategy and design for both identities, a custom-built GreatTrailsNC.com website, a statewide community toolkit, a photo library, and anthem campaign video for marketing. The work aligned partners, equipped communities, and gave residents and visitors clear ways to discover and champion trails.
The
Challenge
North Carolina’s 10,000 miles of trails—from Blue Ridge ridgelines to the coastal Outer Banks—have long offered world-class recreation and generated tourism income, but the story was fragmented. With countless local efforts and trail types, there was little unified messaging to link them under a single statewide identity. North Carolina’s Great Trails State Coalition needed a clear brand and communications strategy to help rally partners, attract visitors, and help every community promote its trails as part of North Carolina’s greater outdoor image.
And the Year of The Trail was born. The Year of the Trail was born—a statewide celebration designed to unite communities, inspire trail use, and position North Carolina as the Great Trails State.
A house of brands approach was taken and a complementary brand system was created for both.
Content
Creation
DbD produced a statewide photo library and campaign video capturing the people, places, and energy of North Carolina’s trail network for use across campaign and tourism marketing.
Website
DbD designed and developed GreatTrailsNC.com as the digital hub for the campaign—connecting users to trails, events, resources, and stories across North Carolina.
Community Toolkit
DbD created a comprehensive community toolkit that equipped local leaders with templates, messaging, and visuals to promote trails and host Year of the Trail events statewide.
Destination by Design partnered with the Great Trails State Coalition to build the Year of the Trail campaign and the statewide Great Trails State brand identity, delivering strategy, a custom GreatTrailsNC.com website, a community toolkit, and campaign content that activated trail use across North Carolina’s 10,000 miles of trails. A house of brands approach created complementary identities for both the campaign and the coalition, unifying a previously fragmented statewide trail story.
In North Carolina, destination marketing and community branding come together most powerfully at the statewide level, where countless local trail efforts need one unifying voice. Year of the Trail reflects that pairing, combining brand strategy and visual identity design for both the Great Trails State and Year of the Trail identities with a statewide photo library and anthem campaign video capturing the people and places behind North Carolina’s trail network.
A fragmented trail system, however extensive, struggles to compete for visitor attention without a unifying story. Year of the Trail solved that by giving the Great Trails State Coalition a clear brand and communications strategy, then equipping local leaders directly through a comprehensive community toolkit with templates, messaging, and visuals, so towns from the Blue Ridge to the Outer Banks could promote their own trails as part of one larger statewide movement.
Destination marketing is the practice of promoting a place, or in this case an entire statewide network, through branding, content, and digital campaigns designed to grow visitor awareness and drive tourism. For the Great Trails State Coalition, that meant a fully integrated program: two complementary brand identities, a custom website, statewide photography and video, and a community toolkit built to rally partners and give residents and visitors clear ways to discover and champion North Carolina’s trails.
North Carolina’s trail network spans the entire state, from Blue Ridge Mountain ridgelines in the west to the coastal Outer Banks in the east, covering roughly 10,000 miles of trails. That geographic range was the core challenge behind Year of the Trail, uniting wildly different trail types and regions under one shared identity as the Great Trails State.
