A Strong Discovery Phase

Research by 360i revealed that prospective visitors were less interested in a typical listing page and more excited by the opportunity to be an ‘experiential discoverer’— a segment defined by their desire to uncover new experiences and explore off the beaten path.

New Orleans has a rich history and truly one of a kind cultural experiences hidden around the city, so we encouraged prospective visitors to live like a local and uncover gems through immersive digital experiences tailored to our core target.

A Map as Unique as New Orleans

Rather than the typical CVB website with simple listings of locations, we knew we wanted our web application (and entire campaign) to be centered around a map design that brought a taste of New Orleans to the visual forefront. Developing a map that is beautiful in various types of media, usable at various zoom levels, and also uniquely memorable was a difficult undertaking.

One common way of styling a map is by passing a style array to Google Maps through the JavaScript API v3. There are even great WYSIWYG map styling tools like Snazzy Maps to help quickly visualize results. However, creating a map that stood out from the crowd was going to require a more custom approach.

Developing a map that is beautiful in various types of media, usable at various zoom levels, and also uniquely memorable was a difficult undertaking.

I started by pulling various open GIS data sets from data.nola.gov and TIGER/Line® Shapefiles from the census.gov website. Shapefiles are essentially coordinate point data tables that when plotted together can form geo maps. Using ArcGIS and Adobe Illustrator, I was able to modify paths as needed and carefully remove any rough edge data points.

With this newly cleaned and customized data point set I was ready to begin styling the map. I enlisted the help of illustrator and comic book artist Paulina Ganucheau to create watercolor patterns at her studio. She provided textures that had subtle accents and purposeful imperfections giving each color a distinct feel. Taking each watercolor swatch into Adobe Photoshop I used the offset filter until there was a seamless repeating tile pattern that could be imported into TileMill by Mapbox (now called Mapbox Studio). In order to edit the styles and apply the watercolor patterns, I learned the map rendering language CartoCSS — a CSS-like syntax that renders maps.

Using Leaflet.js and a custom built PHP tile server to integrate with Google Maps, allowing users to zoom in and get details like street names, neighborhood boundaries, and even city streetcar lines.

A Map at the Heart of a Campaign

The result was a one of a kind hand-painted watercolor map that was used in everything from printed and digital media, to video spots, and even on the side of food trucks that crisscrossed the county to promote the campaign.

Finding Your Bearings

Managing Business Listings

With over 4,000 listings for restaurants, shops, venues, attractions, and other businesses, it was critical to create a backend infrastructure that leveraged their current database. I created a MySQL relational database model with a custom PHP content management system for managing all info and photos for application users, featured users, and business listings. The system also allows users to create itineraries for their trip and share them with friends.

Custom CMS Interface

To ensure that the Content Management System (CMS) was incredibly easy and efficient to update information, we completed a full design process of the backend system including low-fidelity wireframes during the discovery phase. This helped us identify the most used features and quickly shift the interface to streamline the tasks completed most often or that were previously difficult to accomplish.

RESULTS

In the first half of 2013 the website and campaign garnered more than 600 million impressions. Buzz from the effort has helped people see the city in a new light, with Travel and Leisure naming New Orleans No. 2 on their Best Cities in America list and the Daily Beast ranking NOLA as the No. 2 most “aspirational city” in the country.

The results speak for themselves: The city of New Orleans has broken visitor attendance records every single year since the launch of the campaign. In 2017 the city hosted 10.989 million visitors who spent $7.51 billion with more than 80 percent of New Orleans visitors spending the night for an average stay duration of 4.36 days according to Hospitality Research Center. The report also states visitors are staying for fun, with more than 80 percent of visitors being leisure travelers.

The creators involved have also been recognized by our peers in the advertising and web development communities, receiving a Gold & Best in Show from the American Advertising Awards, as well as a Webby Award for Tourism & Leisure.

Case Study Video

Currently the campaign has over 1 billion impressions. Here's a look at how we achieved this mark.

Campaign Launch Commercial

Advertisement featuring the voice of John Goodman ran nationwide to promote the launch of the new website and drive traffic.

Target Audience Commercial Series

A commercial series of three ads that all use the same narrative script, but visually tell three very different stories.

Current Web Application

The website is now in it's 5th iteration and certain features have changed since my departure from the team building the project. You can view the current website as it exists at followyournola.com.

Launch Website