One thing we’ve done a lot of looking back over the past 25 years of Innovations Branding House is reminisce on all the work we’ve done. While we have a laundry list of projects we are proud to have put into production this millennium, there is one project like no other we’d be remiss not to revisit: RoadTrip KY.
To set the stage, RoadTrip KY is unlike any other project because it wasn’t a client-focused effort, as 99% of our daily output tends to be. It was a passion project conceived by the team to showcase our video producing/content generating strengths while allowing for a creative direction completely of our own choosing.
“What would we do if we could do anything we wanted?”
The primary difference in this project vs our typical client work is that RoadTrip KY was, in a way, a selfish project. Typically, brand development and the marketing strategies that fuel them are for a specific audience. Any video produced, content written, ad campaign generated is with a target audience in mind.
RoadTrip KY was different in that we were our target audience. Meaning, we took this opportunity to tell the stories we wanted to tell in an effort to inform (and hopefully entertain) each other. It is a documentary, or rather, a series of documentary vignettes that, once we had collected them, ultimately told a bigger story through the commonalities found throughout the series’ year-plus long tenure.
The documentary film the Innovations team ended up producing (and winning an award for) was practically an afterthought. When we began RoadTrip KY, we merely had a concept and a short list of subjects we wanted to highlight, and the green light to make it happen.
The Process
First and foremost, the process was a democratic one. We all had a place or two in mind that we felt passionately about, whether it was the story of the business itself or the product(s) they created. So our subject pool was vast, and it only needed to meet one piece of criteria: it needed to be a Kentucky entity through and through.
The easy part was coming up with several dozen potential destinations. The challenge lay in getting the right contacts for the businesses we wanted to showcase, then having the calendar freedom to coordinate interviews and tours for b-roll with very busy people who had to take significant chunks of time out of their very busy schedules to talk with our team, and purely out of their own curiosity or charity.
While we were no doubt disappointed that some stories just hit too many road blocks to ever get produced, the results we got were well beyond even our most optimistic hopes.
Starnes Barbecue
To get the ball rolling, we opted to tell a local story before gassing up and curating our Road Trip playlists. Tim Starnes of beloved Paducah institution Starnes Barbecue was kind enough to open the doors one Monday morning (when they’re typically closed) to tell us the story of the multi-generational eatery his grandfather started in 1955. We all had our own memories of bellying up on the spindle stools around the horseshoe counter in the mint green dining room, but we did not know it was the sum of those stories being told from generation to generation that fueled the long-standing success for a small shop that has survived on word-of-mouth advertising alone for nearly three quarters of a century now.
Heine Bros. Coffee
Heine Bros. Coffee was an early unanimous choice for this project. It was more than a slam dunk of a fit… they roast great coffee, we consume copious amounts of it as a coffee-loving business with a dedicated coffee bar. They are a Kentucky treasure, and one that has global connections, as the coffee growers from where Heine Bros. source their coffees are connected through the co-op they started to make sure farmers are treated fairly. Their efforts to support and uplift communities were both local and global, and the fair-trade-sourced coffee they roast is a gift to Kentucky and beyond.
Chaney’s Dairy Barn
We aimed to seek stories with historic significance, as well as those maybe lesser known, even to Kentuckians. For this reason, Chaney’s Dairy Barn was an ideal match. The story of a family farm from the late 1800s turned ice cream maker and restaurateur, Chaney’s Dairy Barn encapsulates all the qualities of a true Kentucky business complete with their story of resilience and perseverance in the face of uncertainty. Not to mention they are home to a couple of the most famous bovines in the known world.
Woodford Reserve
It would’ve been difficult to do Road Trip Kentucky and not make a stop along the bourbon trail. We were very fortunate to get in contact with the right people at Woodford Reserve at just the right time, as any scheduling variance would’ve stopped this story from being told before it started. But, not only did we get to hear from (at the time) Master Distiller/Bourbon Celebrity Chris Morris, but we were also able to interview current Master Distiller Elizabeth McCall and get an inside scoop on one of the industry’s most beloved brands and a true Kentucky icon with a connection to the most famous sporting event hosted on Kentucky Bluegrass.
Ale-8-One
There was a point in time where it was widely accepted that Ale-8 would not get out of the “wishful thinking” category for one reason or another. But against all odds, a calendar opening popped up and we were able to arrange a time for our team to travel to Winchester to meet with president Ellen McGeeney and CEO Fielding Rogers to discuss Kentucky’s favorite soft drink and unofficial mascot of the Red River Gorge. This could be as “historic Kentucky” as one story could possibly be and we are beyond thankful for the opportunity to tell it.
And not only that, we ended up working with Ale-8 on a project shortly after!
A Means Without An End
There was so much to do in the way of outreach, planning and scheduling that there was hardly time left to really plan out an end game for RoadTrip KY. For some of us, we imagined the project might just go on indefinitely and we’d put hundreds upon thousands of miles on odometers zig-zagging the state year after year collecting stories along the way.
But after Ale-8-One wrapped, the workload began to increase and scheduling just came to an organic end, as we were just too busy to get back out there.
As we deliberated this hard truth, the conversation became reflective of our then year-plus journey. And in those conversations, a narrative grew about brand equity and how each of these brands came from a different time with a different approach, yet they all share the title of “Beloved Kentucky Brand.”
As we ruminated on the various episodes, an organic conversation happened where we explored each business’s differences and similarities and how they interacted with this larger, but specific identity.
Then came the idea of stitching together the stories into one full-length piece anchored by those conversations, and a full-length piece was born. This project happened to coincide with the Louisville’s International Festival of Film in 2018, so we submitted RoadTrip KY for consideration.
It came as a surprise when we took home honors for Best Documentary that year, an achievement we were humbled to accept, having simply been the casual by-product of a passion project with no end game when it began.
In the years since we’ve published this body of work, it’s ultimately proven to be a significant part of our identity in a number of ways: it helped to cement and further develop our interview process for brand building; it’s served as a conversation piece on social media and beyond; and it’s actually been a valuable piece in our portfolio to make new connections for brand building and storytelling.
Should there be a lesson to take away from this endeavor, I suppose it’s this: don’t be afraid to bet on yourself. In the beginning, this was simply a passion project that would be categorized as an expense, but what resulted was some of the most impactful work we put out in that era. Work that we look back fondly on as we continue our own road trip down memory lane 25 years later.
