One of the pleasures of living in Portland, Oregon is the proximity to the Oregon Coast… with some of the nearest points being about an hour away, it’s temptingly close, and its call is hard to ignore. Plus, we’ve been thinking especially hard about the coast for the last few months while working on the new Oregon Coast Visitors Association (OCVA) website. Direct your web browser to:
www.visittheoregoncoast.com
When we get to combine our passion for what we do with our enthusiasm for one of our state’s most awesome features, it’s a true joy. (Plus, there’s plenty of opportunity for “research trips.”)
Based on the rebrand of the Oregon Coast Visitors Association to the People’s Coast by Wieden+Kennedy, Substance was brought in to imagine and create the digital brand… what does the People’s Coast mean from an interactive standpoint, and how could it be represented online?
We tried to answer that question with the site; here’s a rundown of the some of the highlights:
The People’s Coast as Seen by the People
There are a lot of photos out there of the Oregon Coast. We thought it would be an interesting idea to use the photos from Flickr covered under the Creative Commons license on the OCVA website… empowering people to share their view of the coast. From Flickr, we pass the images through a middleware application that allows for detailed tagging to provide consistent location and activity types, which then displays these images in the appropriate places on the People’s Coast site. By using and extending Flickr’s API, we’re able to achieve several things from a digital brand standpoint: publish existing Flickr photos of the Oregon Coast to the People’s Coast site; create a visual, searchable database by storing all photos submitted through the People’s Coast site; and extend the digital brand of the People’s Coast to Flickr. By extending the digital brand, we create new ways for people to discover the People’s Coast. The ability to upload your own Oregon Coast photos through the OCVA site should launch shortly, so get those photos ready.
What to Do on the People’s Coast
Extending the visual search concept, the What to Do section features photo galleries of some of the great activities on the coast. And by using the wealth of information from the Travel Oregon website on coastal activities, we’re able to utilize existing Travel Oregon data in new ways. First, we pull the data from Travel Oregon. Then we pass it through a custom middleware layer that allows OCVA staff to feature OCVA members. (This provides an added feature to OCVA membership by highlighting these activities in the search results.) Finally, we publish the edited data to the People’s Coast website, filtering content across activity types and cities to let people search for what they want to do and where they want to do it.
Cities on the Coast
To help people find things to do and places to stay in a specific city, the Cities on the Coast section provides each city with a way to tell their story. On the main Cities on the Coast page, we use the photo gallery to feature images tagged with the cities on the coast, allowing people to experience each city visually. Then, using data from Travel Oregon, along with custom city pages managed through a WordPress Content Management System, each city can highlight the activities, lodging, dining and events unique to their location.
Stories from the People’s Coast
To further apply the concept of the People’s Coast, the site encourages visitors to the coast, as well as local residents, to contribute their story to the site. These stories are submitted into the WordPress Content Management System for OCVA editors to review, approve and publish to the site.
What else?
There’s plenty of other aspects to the site… the custom WordPress Content Management System (as mentioned earlier) that controls much of the site content; searchable hotel, motel and RV park lodging options in the Where to Stay section; the ability to request more information from OCVA; more information on OCVA membership; travel tips… and that’s just for Phase 1. Phase 2 will extend many of the functions of the site, add photo galleries to each city page, and some other secret stuff that we’ll reveal when it launches.
So, the next time you’re thinking about visiting the People’s Coast, make sure to stop by visittheoregoncoast.com to plan your trip. And if you have questions about the site, leave a comment and we’ll get you an answer.
For more information on the People’s Coast rebrand, here’s a link to the press release.
Nice! Bad-ass site guys
10:12 pm / 27 August 2008
[...] Of course there are other features of the site that are common to many destination sites; for more, please read The People’s Coast Believes in Substance. [...]
6:30 am / 11 September 2008