When people say, “marketing Lexington,” they automatically associate those words with Lexington-based marketing agencies and ads. Every industry has its mecca. Film has Hollywood, Broadway has New York, and Entertainment has Las Vegas; however, it’s fair to say that national companies probably do not look to the Bluegrass very often when it comes to advertising, and Oculus wants to change that.
Our desire is not only to create top-notch marketing within Lexington, KY, but to unabashedly market Lexington itself to the rest of the country. This past June, Oculus had the opportunity to work with Pillsbury and New York based food blog Serious Eats. The project came about through mutual contacts and the task was dauntingly simple: Produce a 4-5 minute multi-camera cooking video for YouTube… oh, and you only have 48 hours to make it happen. The crew here at Oculus rarely backs down from the challenge of a short turnaround time, and decided to say, “No problem.”
Tapping Cooking Channel host and Lexington native Brigitte Nguyen, we set about the marathon shoot/editing session and put together a fun and enlightening piece about a New York summer craze, the “Cronut.” The video went live at the beginning of June, and since then has gone on to be one of their top 10 videos topping segments with the likes of Alton Brown, Mario Batali, and Anthony Bourdain that have had years to garner more and more views.
While making a product with a great team, great talent, and a great client is…well…great, we had our hearts set on a continued relationship with our New York friends. While Oculus has lots of experience marketing companies in Lexington and all over Kentucky, we had the new task of marketing ourselves as a better alternative to “local” companies in the Big Apple.
We made the case for producing more content in Lexington that could be done to the standards that a national company would require but with the benefit of cost reduction. Lexington, and Kentucky in general, afford companies like Oculus the benefit of lower overhead in our day to day, which allows us to pass that reduced cost onto our clients. Then, in late August, the spoils of our marketing efforts paid off. The call came down from Pillsbury that they wanted 10 more videos.
Oculus takes great pride in proving that Lexington isn’t the small, backwoods town that much of the South is portrayed to be in movies and television. It is a vibrant city full of talent and endless possibilities. Marketing Lexington actually turned out to be easy, and Pillsbury has been thrilled with the products and the growing online reception.
In the new series targeting social media and blogs, we are helping Pillsbury craft an online image that mirrors what they are trying to cultivate with their brand through traditional advertising methods like television. Our goal was simple from the start: deliver national quality for a national brand. Social Media content doesn’t need to live in a no man’s land of cheap and boring or overpriced and effective.
Oculus hopes to continue bringing national attention to Lexington, Kentucky, whether it falls into our lap, or we have to steamroll our way in. We aim to prove to those in the “big cities” that Lexington is able to provide the best quality there is without breaking the bank. For us, it wasn’t even a task of marketing Lexington, it was advertising the amazing things it has to offer, proving that talent can be found anywhere and quality should always come first. We can’t wait to sink our teeth into what’s next…