This case study includes:

Advertising, Social Media content Strategy, Brand Strategy, Motion Graphics & Brand Collateral

Camp Wilderness Ridge

Every project makes you better at something if your heart and mind are in the right place. It very well could also drive you crazy if you’re sure that you know what and don’t get the results.

This was my first time doing advertising & social media. I also have to say that this is my first project where I had to stare a horrible creature in the face for the very first time.

Results.

I love this project at the heart of it. Camp Wilderness is a non-profit Christian camp that engages boys and young men in a WILDERNESS experience. For CWR, camp isn’t just a resort or a retreat location, it is an environment most suitable for the cultivation of servant-leadership passion into the coming generation of men.

Camp Wilderness Ridge are:

CHRIST-CENTERED
SERVANT-LEADERSHIP FOCUSED
WILDERNESS ORIENTED

I was always impressed, and as a brand strategist, relieved, by their high-definition Purpose, Vision and Mission. Go read their about page, you’ll have no doubt about the passion behind this team of coordinators and staff. This made me eager to meet the team

I was brought on to market the return from their covid-19 exodus, they were back for the first time since 2019. Most of the previous campers seemed to have all but forgotten..

Motion

We quickly realized that video was performing far better than static imagery in regards to digital marketing creatives (the term used for the visual asset that companies an advertisement). I myself became convinced of the ‘power of motion-picture’ when I began viewing CWR’s YouTube channel, which has videos from almost every camp since 2012 as an overview, and a sentimental one (you’ll know if your camp ever did this for you).

5 minutes of skimming these edits gave me a far more depth-involved understanding of the Camp Wilderness Ridge experience than any of the photos or explanation I was given. I had to use these.

The CWR YouTube videos became the content for our advertisements, and much of our social media posts.

Though certainly a novice After Effects practitioner, I have such an adoration for it ever since I started learning and subsequently keeping my eyes peeled for other ways type, and shape are put to motion. See my motion work for my church HCBC Leander which includes animation of our primary symbol.

Visit CWR

It’s never a bad time of year to be thinking about registering your kids or grandkids for Summer Camp.

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For Reels.

Reel content took off almost since almost immediately after its inception as a rather obvious imitation of the infamous Chinese platform TikTok, which uses an aspect ratio that really wasn’t being used before. But it seems obvious to fill up the entirety of the screen with quick, consumable content now. Reels are available as advertisements and have been showing marvelous engagement metrics, 22% higher than static imagery. And we saw a serious improvement in our adspend once we deployed Reels of our own, by taking screen recordings of our camp wrap-ups and plugging them into the Reel creator within Instagram. Not only are Reel ads performing better (and now make up the totality of our ad creatives), but content posts do quite well too in regards to our reach. Especially considering that Reels go into a randomized feed.

It was a great impetus for me to deploy my motion-design know-how. We decided that we wanted to invest in some organic, informative content posting. One of my solutions is a Reel series for Camp Wilderness that I call ‘Wilderness Wisdom’, where I share some unique info about the Wild and relate it to the Camp’s purpose and spiritual beliefs. The very first Wilderness Wisdom Reel I made was a set of scripture appearing and disappearing over some footage of the forest. This series begins to close with a title caption that reads ‘Thank God For the Wilderness’, with the Wilderness Wisdom caption remaining below. It ends with a brief CTA letting viewers know to share ‘the way out of the ‘Wilderness’ with a friend.