Full disclosure: You aren’t going to journey a giant white rabbit in case you go to the Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Nor will you stand in the shadow of an 
extensive rock monster when you visit the Neskowin Ghost Forest, a magnificent seaside at the state’s northern coast studded with historical Sitka spruce stumps. And you almost genuinely will no longer come across a bearded tree-man at the same time as soaking in one in every of Oregon’s many volcanic warm springs.
You could be capable of meet these fascinating characters, and lots of greater, in Travel Oregon’s “Only Slightly Exaggerated” advert marketing campaign for tourism within the kingdom, and in Only Slightly Exaggerated: The Art of Travel Oregon: a newly launched e-book that offers readers an internal examine organization Wieden+Kennedy’s innovative manner. The animated ads, co-created by using Nick Stokes and Ansel Wallenfang of W+K (in collaboration with Psyop and Sun Creature), take a fanciful technique to sell journey. Instead of the usage of film footage of the state’s sights—from hot-air balloons in the Willamette Valley to the crystalline waters of Crater Lake—Stokes and Wallenfang took a danger by using animating Oregon’s wonders as an alternative and including a touch of the fantastical.
“We had an insight that I assume is quite true to anybody who has a phone with a digicam on it,” says Stokes. “You cross places like Mount Hood or Trillium Lake or the Coast, and all of them look so top notch while you’re looking at them together with your eyes. But when you take an image, it never pretty captures the class.”
They realized that animation ought to add a dimension of a surprise this is sarcastically more proper-to-life than even the maximum excessive-definition photo. “To certainly capture the sensation of actually being in Oregon, we had to exaggerate matters a chunk,” says Wallenfang. “These had been all actual places, in order that become our beginning region. Then we imagined characters to enhance the scenes and produce a little bit greater magic.”
Hence the campaign’s tagline, “Only Slightly Exaggerated,” and its solid of untamed, majestic, and whimsical creatures who lead you on an adventure from the country’s mountains to its deserts, and to the Pacific shore. There’s a frog who eats the roast worm in a Portland restaurant; a cloud mechanic who makes it rain at the grapes that come to be Oregon’s high-quality wines; a mountain-biking caterpillar; and that white rabbit inside the tulip fields, possibly the marketing campaign’s most iconic image.
“I love the rabbit,” says Stokes. “It became the primary individual, and I assume it’s nevertheless my favored. When we had been first concepting this, we were being a little too responsible, and we weren’t placing sufficient magic into the spot. We nearly desired to just do a journey advert that changed into lively superbly. And then we were like, why don’t we simply make a humongous rabbit? That changed into while it clearly kicked in, we will do something we need right here.”
The campaign released in the spring of 2018 and its achievement meant that Stokes and Wallenfang were tasked with growing another new release for 2019. This one is barely longer and builds at the delightful imagery that outstanding the first spot. Opening with whales soaring via the clouds, the 2019 spot is peppered with callbacks to the primary generation (be careful for the postcards on the wall within the eating place scene), while introducing new characters consisting of the Neskowin Rock Spirit, a benevolent giant who’s awoke every morning by using a seagull so that he can make the sun rise.
The animation fashion changed into itself the made of an excessive seek. “We looked into animation during the while, and plenty of different agencies,” says Stokes. “We observed that such things as Disney or Saturday-morning cartoons have been too clunky and goofy. The story we’re telling isn’t alleged to be lovely or funny or slapstick. We desired to showcase the truth that Oregon is a stunning location, and use sophisticated animation to deliver that to lifestyles.” At the last minute, the Copenhagen-based totally business enterprise Sun Creature put in an offer nailing the appearance that Stokes and Wallenfang were seeking.
As the campaign evolved, the innovative team stayed centered no longer on the characters for their personal sake, however on how they could convey the country’s various geography and recreational services to life. Oregon has seven distinct areas with wildly divergent landscapes and points of interest, from the fertile Willamette Valley to the starkly beautiful Eastern Oregon deserts. That range makes the state a compelling person in its personal proper.
