An Awe-Inspiring Rebrand

Three Key Challenges

1. Ensure the brand had a solid foundation for a post-pandemic, quickly evolving future.
2. Create a brand flexible enough to serve the needs of visitors, the organization and the destination.
3. Create messaging and a position that would emotionally connect with the right visitors.

Ensure the brand had a solid foundation for a post-pandemic, quickly evolving future.

At Noble, we consider four perspectives when creating a brand strategy – internal needs, visitor desires, the competitive landscape and the cultural/x-factor.

Research included a social media sentiment analysis and an online survey to more than 1,000 West Coast/key market travelers. One thing was clear: Lake Tahoe had an outstanding, and almost mystical, brand – with awareness and affinity numbers surpassing all of the similar destinations we compared it to. Travelers didn’t really distinguish between north, south, east or west. They were just visiting Tahoe. That was an important insight.

Further research made it clear that Tahoe South hadn’t connected with locals and the overwhelming desire was to evolve and think a little bigger going forward.

As we began to build out LTVA’s brand platform — Purpose, Principles, Personality, Promise, Position and Vision — we knew the future brand needed to do more for this DMMO. It didn’t just need to be a marketing device, it needed to be an organizational linchpin that unified values, clarified messaging, embraced locals, brought together stakeholders, propped up a sustainability philosophy and set the LTVA up for the future.

Create a brand flexible enough to serve the needs of visitors, the organization and the destination.

Four factors came into sharp focus: 

• Visitors didn’t distinguish the different sides of the lake, especially the farther away they lived from Tahoe.
• Based on local sentiment, becoming a DMMO and the preciousness of Lake Tahoe, the organization needed to be one of the world’s leaders in sustainable tourism
• LTVA was working to add a new leading-edge convention center
• Given that this brand was already among the clear market leaders at the lake, we decided the right strategic move would be to go with a more holistic Lake Tahoe brand. It was the right strategy for the future, as this rising tide would lift all boats around the lake, leading the visitation vision to balance business with the environment and local culture.

Create messaging and a position that would emotionally connect with the right visitors.

The end result is that Tahoe South was transformed into Visit Lake Tahoe.

With this campaign, Noble and Visit Lake Tahoe wanted to position the South Shore as the Total Tahoe experience, but we know that the further away from the destination someone is, making sure we lead with a “lake-first” approach is important. The lake draws them in with the “Awe” and they end up on the South Shore to experience all of the “and then Some” that’s offered with activities and entertainment.

The visitor-focused campaign was meant to introduce this idea of “Awe and then Some” in markets from California to Arizona and Texas. We wanted to inspire through the emotion of the destination and the connections people can make there with the environment and each other.