A full-service marketing, creative branding and digital communications agency specializing in strategic content creation.

A Full Service Branding and Digital Agency | Lewis

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Travel & Tourism

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Nashville Zoo.jpg

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Travel & Tourism Companies We’ve helped Grow

Ready to see real creative solutions that produce real results? Reach out and we'll get started.

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Let’s do something great.

Travel & Tourism Work

Cahaba

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Situation

Our client, a longtime Class A manufacturer, wanted to grow their business by entering the Class B market. Class B, a smaller, more nimble form of RV, often built on a Mercedes Sprinter van chassis, was being purchased by younger audiences for shorter adventures.

Animation and 3D bring a new kind of RV to life.

The Challenge

Lewis has deep roots in the RV industry, with 20 years of building successful sales growth. But now we were asked to take on a completely new kind of challenge: generate excitement for an all-new vehicle that didn’t yet exist. The vehicle itself was still under development.

The Buyer

Class B buyers tend to add more sporting accessories to their vehicles, and have an increased interest in boondocking (camping in remote areas like federal land, as opposed to a traditional RV park with electric and water/sewer connections). They want rugged reliability, some measure of off-road capacity, and a greater sense of adventure.

Design & Branding

Our creative team was deeply involved in the name and design of the new brand. We proposed the native American name Cahaba, inspired by the Alabama wilderness. We also offered significant input into the vehicle’s design and graphics, with a wide range of exploration from our graphic design and 3D artists.

Building Anticipation

We devised a plan to tease the vehicle to our client’s fans while it was still in the conceptual phase. Dramatic images of product details were shared on their owned channels, generating curiosity and excitement among thousands of prospective buyers. We gave the Cahaba its own digital presence with all-new social channels and a website where people could get more information about the vehicle and subscribe to updates. Our team rendered 3D models showcasing different paint schemes and floor plan options. The animation-based approach allowed us to fluidly adapt models in the digital space, even as designs were being finalized.‍

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Everyone knows that branding is much more than colors and a logo. It's an experience. We craft every touchpoint with thought and care. Creating a symphony of memorable moments from beginning to end. Crafting brands that feel once-in-a-lifetime every time.

Branding

Kentucky Bourbon Trail<sup>®</sup>

#A25630

Overview

The KBT™ was formed 25 years ago and has grown into one of America’s most beloved ways to taste and explore 46 distilleries, drawing more than 2.5 million visitors annually from all 50 states and 25 countries. After a national search of agencies, Lewis was selected to develop a new brand and website as part of their 25th Anniversary celebration in 2024.

A brand worth savoring.

Brand Identity

The distilleries on the trail have created new and elevated experiences that are bringing in a more affluent guest. To better reflect today’s experience there was a need for a new brand identity that conveyed a joyful sense of discovery, elevated adventure, and attainable luxury.

The Digital Experience

In addition to the new identity, creating a new digital experience was critical. A reimagined Kentucky Bourbon Trail<sup>®</sup> that encourages greater exploration, slowing down and savoring the moment in an online experience that’s easier to understand, navigate, plan and enjoy. The new site now allows for better tracking, optimization and understanding of visitors which will in turn help the KBT and distilleries better plan for the future.

The new KBT brand and website launched to raise glasses from across Kentucky and the globe. Leveraging earned media coverage across national and international markets, we reintroduced bourbon’s birthplace to millions of eyeballs and set the stage to welcome even more discerning palates.

Results

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Food & Beverage

Behind every return on investment is a lot of number crunching. The same is true for marketing. We're equal parts left brain and right. Using data, analytics, and deep insight to inform standout creative. It's how we create advertising that moves the needle and brings measurable ROI. And that's a beautiful thing.

Marketing

The quality of video production says a lot about the quality of a brand. Whether it's a scripted commercial on TV or a customer testimonial on social media. Our in-house production team provides full-service capabilities. Lighting, shooting, casting, editing and finishing—we do it all from beginning to end. Growth is beautiful. And we make sure it looks that way.

Content Production

Kaiya

#3FA8A8

Kaiya is located in the panhandle of Florida next to Alys Beach on one of the last remaining parcels of land on Scenic 30-A. We created a unique name and “pinnacle” brand for this 26-acre boutique, luxury resort. Additional work included a website, collateral, sales center design, street name and signage, followed by a content marketing campaign to build awareness and affinity for future homeowners.

Achieving the perfect balance

Environmental Development

We continued the story of Kaiya by naming buildings and streets, creating marketing collateral, designing the sales studio and interiors, and handling all social media and video content. We also helped identify target audiences, both in local and feeder markets.

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Achieving the perfect balance.

SweetBay

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SweetBay, a master - planned community in Northwest Florida, came to us in 2018 drastically needing to increase home sales. They came to us with two key questions: who is most likely to buy at SweetBay and how can home sales be exponentially increased in the audience? Our creative and strategy teams toured the property, immersing themselves in the details of every home, and the finer points of every amenity.

Elevating a brand and a community.

With our support, home sales surged, enabling SweetBay to confidently advance to later phases of the project, including development of the Town Center and Marina.

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Unless you like wasting money, return on ad spend is a necessity. We take a deep and constant look at every touchpoint in your customer's journey. Optimizing areas that are potential hiccups. Why are so many customers abandoning carts? Is it taking too many clicks to get to what they want? Could they be upsold before checkout? In the end, if your marketing dollars aren't converting into sales, something is wrong. And that's exactly what we're here to fix. 

ROAS

Nashville Zoo

#ED6F23

To promote Nashville Zoo’s annual Boo at the Zoo event, we leaned into the playful spirit of Halloween—with a wild twist. Our concept featured the zoo’s own animal residents as the stars, donning Halloween masks in a series of striking portraits shot against deep black backgrounds. The unexpected visuals were both eerie and endearing, creating a campaign that stood out across digital, print, and outdoor. By turning the animals into costumed characters themselves, we captured imaginations, sparked smiles, and brought a fresh sense of fun to one of Nashville’s favorite family events.

Putting a Wild Face on Halloween

The Boo at the Zoo campaign brought big results. Attendance jumped by 27% compared to the previous year, making it the most successful run in the event’s history. On several nights, the zoo even had to stop admitting guests due to reaching full capacity—a clear sign that the playful, mask-wearing animals struck a chord with families across Nashville. The campaign didn’t just draw crowds—it helped solidify Boo at the Zoo as a must-attend Halloween tradition in the city.

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Tiffin Motorhomes

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Tiffin has been handcrafting motorhomes in Red Bay, Alabama, since 1972. By the time we began working with them over a decade ago, they were building one of the highest quality motorhomes available. The opportunity: to introduce them to a broader audience of consumers.

Made to move the needle.

Approach

Because both their potential and existing customers are highly mobile, we quickly recognized that Tiffin’s most important marketing tool is their website. However, we also found that even in an increasingly digital world, people who are in the market for a luxury motorhome want tangible demonstrations of colors, finishes and options.

Solution

We evolved Tiffin’s website into a robust content portal that encourages and rewards repeat visits. Prospective customers can dig into the company’s history, go on detailed virtual tours of all models and experience the passion and pride that go into every Tiffin vehicle. Current owners can find essential information, get answers to maintenance questions and engage with their community of fellow owners.

We also developed a photography library and brochure system that communicate the vehicle’s level of quality and sophistication enabling customers to experience all the possible options a Tiffin offers. The third prong of our solution for Tiffin was to elevate the idea of getting back to nature. Over the course of our relationship, we’ve established the message that in a Tiffin, any location is a luxury resort.

Since we began working with them, Tiffin has moved from #8 to the #1 preferred luxury motorhome in the country.

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Seaside

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The story of Seaside's creation and unique architecture were already well-known to Southeastern vacation-goers. But like anything original, it was bound to be copied. After enjoying a high level of brand awareness for more than 25 years, this beachside resort faced the challenge of new attractive, and aggressive competition. Our research helped them better identify high-income renters and second-home prospects. We also uncovered the need for updated communications materials, wayfinding signage, cottage amenities and other enhancements designed to further enrich the Seaside experience.

As a result, we were able to help Seaside grow beyond their seasonal focus to become a year-round destination.

Rebuilding the value of a true original.

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Birmingham Zoo

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The Birmingham Zoo came to us with a simple ask–create a logo mark for their 70th anniversary. What they ended up getting was a year-long integrated campaign celebrating the biggest birthday in Birmingham and inviting everyone to get in touch with their inner party animal.

A bold look for the Birmingham Zoo.

70th Anniversary Logomark

To celebrate the zoo's 70th birthday and the amazing diversity of animal species found there, we created a flexible logo that featured four of their most popular animals in a clean, modern, and most importantly, fun design.

Integrated Campaign

To help promote the zoo's 70th birthday, we created an ad campaign that let the animals show everyone how they each like to party in their own particular way. The ads served as birthday invitations to zoo lovers across the region to join the fun in seasonal events throughout the year.

Campaign Event: Cougar Crossing

To promote the zoo's new Cougar Crossing exhibit, we teased a giant present arriving soon. We even had artwork in a local art gallery defaced by mysterious claws. Then we took our larger-than-life gift around town, where it growled at passersby before the big reveal.

Campaign Event: Carousel Reopening

When the newly refurbished carousel was about to reopen, we placed life-size carousel animals on already existing lamp poles to let everyone know another gift was headed back to the zoo.

Cahaba Brewing Partnership

The party continued all year, and when the annual "Zoo Brews" event arrived, we partnered with Cahaba Brewing Co. to create custom Blonde Ale and Hazy IPA designs. The perfect drinks to raise a toast to 70 years of wild.

The Birmingham Zoo's 70th birthday was one no man or animal will ever forget. Our efforts had social media and local news stations going ape, and boosted annual attendance by 10% and saw a 17% increase in zoo membership. A birthday wish we were more than happy to help grant.

This year, digital media has really had to stay on their toes — poised and ready to jump at any second. With all the consumer privacy regulation changes, and now, the real slime of the earth deciding to take ad fraud to a whole new level, there’s a lot to keep an eye on.

A [recent profile of ad fraud](https://www.trafficguard.ai/news/digital-ad-fraud-a-profile-on-north-america#:~:text=The%20recent%20profile%20of%20ad,at%20%2444%20million%20per%20day) in North America by TrafficGuard and Juniper Research estimates that within the next five years, advertisers will be losing $100 million a day due to ad fraud. That represents an increase of 125 percent since 2018. They’re also predicting that by 2023, 1 in 5 ad transactions will be derived from fraud. That sounds bad. But until everyone is clear on exactly what ad fraud means, we can’t move on to the solutions. So, here we go.

The simplest way to explain it is this: Ad fraud is when you pay for ads to appear somewhere online, and you think they did — because the reports say so. But no one saw your ad. The data was skewed from fake clicks from bots or click farms.

Even worse, from the vantage point of the brand or agency paying to run the ads, ad fraud is difficult to detect. Before we explain how we’re working to mitigate the risks of ad fraud for our clients (and ourselves), we want to make sure you’re up to speed on all the basic ways ad fraud can happen.

Common Types of Ad Fraud

Unfortunately, the slime balls behind ad fraud are no dummies, and they’ve managed to create multiple pathways to stealing your marketing dollars. The list of digital mediums where ad fraud rears its ugly head continues to grow, but there are several common pathways you’ll want to keep tabs on to start.

Click fraud

This is the most common, simplest type of advertising fraud. Fake traffic is generated through either an automated clicking platform or through click farms. A sign of this would be a higher than usual click-throughs that don’t lead to a sale.

Domain spoofing

Basically, this is impersonating a website. By building a domain and design that appears to be the intended site where your ad would run, the people running these sites can receive payment for your ads, but those ads will never be seen. This is also a common identity theft tactic.

Ad stacking

This happens a lot with programmatic ad placements. It’s when a publisher sells multiple ads on a website, but they’re all stacked on top of each other blocking those behind the top ad. The ads gain fake impressions, even though they’re not really being seen by users.

Pixel stuffing

Similar to ad stacking, only the ads are placed within pixels on the webpage, and they are not visible to potential customers. You end up paying for impressions when there’s zero chance of the ad actually being seen.

Location-based ad fraud

Location is super important to industries such as retail, quick-serve restaurants, the automotive space, and many others. These businesses rely on potential customers being close in proximity to their business. So, in order to take advantage of that, fraudsters fake the geolocations on mobile devices to place them around a specific location, causing brands to deliver ads to people in their target locations who aren’t actually there. With fraudsters taking advantage of all of these weak spots — and this is just a few — it can start to feel like the situation is getting more and more dire, but is it? We believe there are ways around the fake data.

The Ad Fraud Situation Is Bad, But It’s Also Manageable

The amount of digital ad fraud has grown to represent billions of dollars, and naturally, many marketers are now asking, “_Is this still an efficient and effective channel for my brand?_”

Yes, yes it is. As long as you know what you’re doing. While the numbers are concerning on the surface, the amount by which a specific brand experiences ad fraud with their campaigns will vary drastically, and ultimately lies in the hands of whoever manages their media. All programmatic buys are not created equal, and anyone that's running and optimizing a campaign strictly based on their Demand Side Platform’s (DSP) algorithm without strategic oversight is contributing to these crazy high fraud stats. In layman’s terms, allowing a DSP to completely automate the way you’re running ads, taking a set-it and forget-it approach is a risky move.

Back when programmatic media was popularized... Years ago, when programmatic buying was the new and shiny object, many of us were attracted to the idea that we could hit KPIs with the platform algorithm doing all of the heavy lifting. We would push long-tail impression volume to get the largest sample to then prospect from for conversions. Never mind that many of those conversions weren’t actions taken by real humans. And by the way, we paid for those fake events.

Smart media teams today should avoid that approach alone. While algorithms are still a close friend, we can’t put all of our trust in their judgment. In order to avoid fraud and maintain a level of brand safety, we also tap into premium publisher white lists, private marketplace deals (PMPs), walled garden inventory (i.e. Google FLoC products) and first-party data from site tags and customer databases. Our cost per thousand impressions (CPMs) aren't going to be dirt cheap, but the value of what we're delivering is higher and more qualified.

The fact is that fraud exists, and it is undoubtedly present with the campaigns we run. However, we’ve found an approach to buying and reporting programmatic media that involves multiple checks to minimize bot traffic and wasted ad dollars. Here it is:

How To Minimize and Prevent Ad Fraud AND Have Successful Digital Ad Buys:

- Use analytics to examine the traffic our campaigns are driving. Check that the geography of the session matches the targeting, and look for suspicious patterns as related to site traffic, bounce rates, time and user path once on the site.
- Run every programmatic buy through a third-party ad server to get unbiased confirmation that the impressions reported by your DSP match with what you believe was purchased. If they don't, negotiate a makegood.
- Pay an additional CPM to layer filters from [Double Verify](https://doubleverify.com/), [Integral Ad Science](https://integralads.com/), MOAT, etc on top of programmatic buys.
- Apply proprietary exclusion lists and exclusion lists from DSP to avoid known domains for fraud.
- Review site transparency reports from campaigns on a regular basis. This is done in order to confirm that ads are running in brand-safe environments, and it will allow you to proactively identify any suspicious domains so that you can add those to your already existing exclusion lists.
- Always Push to optimize digital campaigns to the most specific KPIs (not just CTR) where possible. While bots can still trick conversion tracking, if you're an agency or marketing partner, when you’re layering actual data from the brand over your reports, you will be able to validate what you’re doing as legitimate.

While the full picture of ad fraud will continue to evolve as the fraudsters learn from their mistakes and find ways around our fixes, the dangers still lie mostly in unmonitored programmatic media buys. So keep your eyes open, and keep reading articles like these to stay ahead of what’s coming. No one hates losing advertising dollars more than we do, so [let us know if we can help](mailto:newbiz@lewiscommunications.com) shed more light on any fraudulent media concerns you may have.

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Ad fraud (and how to mitigate it.)

Whether we’re talking about a big university or a small college, a public college or a faith-based organization, the Big Ten Conference, or the ACC — all of these higher education institutions have one thing in common — every one of them relies on enrollment to survive. 2020 posed new challenges to overcome for the higher education category. Since the pandemic hit, many students have delayed enrollment. The [National Student Clearinghouse Research Center](https://nscresearchcenter.org/stay-informed/) reports **overall enrollment as being down 3.3 percent. Freshman enrollment is down 13 percent, and community college freshman enrollment is seeing a 19 percent decline**.

When enrollment is down, faculty and board members start to wriggle in their seats. Meetings about the future feel different and less anticipatory. And the need for a tangible plan becomes imminent, regardless of the available budget allocated for recruiting or marketing. Not every school has a ton of money lying around to put towards marketing. Which begs the question, what do universities and colleges do when they absolutely have to get more students enrolled without a big budget at their disposal?

What we can tell you from first-hand experience is that, regardless of your budget, you have enough to make a positive impact. You just have to be focused about how you use the money you have. That starts with nailing down the opportunities that will create the most value.

Travel & Tourism

Travel & Tourism Work

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