Finding new ways into Almost Heaven
Some tourism accounts give you a campaign. West Virginia gave us a world to play with.
Over several years, I’ve helped turn the state’s Almost Heaven positioning into everything from TV commercials and outdoor campaigns to live experiences, seasonal work and deliberately blank television screens.
The challenge has always been the same: how do you make people who think they know West Virginia see it differently?
For summer, we turned John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads into Summer Singalong, a TV campaign that made one of America’s most familiar songs feel like an invitation to experience the place that inspired it.
For winter, Little Skier used one tiny skier against the scale of West Virginia’s mountains to tell a much bigger story about skiing in the state.
And for Screen-Free Summer, we took something that might normally be considered a tourism weakness, places where your phone struggles to find a signal, and made it the reason to visit. Because sometimes the best thing West Virginia can give you is absolutely nothing on your screen.
The idea ran across the campaign, including a TV spot that effectively gave viewers a black screen, replacing pictures with the sounds of the West Virginia wilderness. The work went on to win a Gold Adrian Award.
Beyond advertising, we’ve found ways to bring West Virginia to people in the real world too: from introducing new audiences to skiing via a 15 minute ski holiday with a real ski machine, to a Country Roads Karaoke rally machine voted the best attraction at The America 250 State Fair.
And people came.
West Virginia tourism has grown dramatically over the years we’ve been working with the state.
In 2024, a record 77.2 million people visited West Virginia, spending a record $6.6 billion and generating $9.1 billion in total economic impact.
Since 2019, visitor spending has grown 28.2%, more than twice the 12.4% growth seen nationally over the same period.
77.2M
VISITORS
VISITORS
$6.6BN
VISITOR SPEND
VISITOR SPEND
+28.2%
VISITOR SPEND VS 2019
VISITOR SPEND VS 2019
