Gallia marketing efforts take second

COLUMBUS — Gallia County Economic Development’s Aerial Marketing Video has been selected as runner-up in the “Economic Development Marketing: Small Community Category” at the Ohio Economic Development Association’s (OEDA) Annual Excellence Awards at the 2017 Annual Summit, held Oct. 18-20 at the Columbus Renaissance Downtown.

“We are very pleased the Ohio Economic Development Association recognized the efforts of our aerial video marketing project. We are continually looking for new and unique ways to market our community to prospective companies and site consultants.” said Melissa Clark, Gallia County Economic Development director.

Community Improvement Corporation of Gallia County President Josh Bodimer said,“The marketing video showcases available sites Gallia County has to offer to expanding companies. We hope this marketing approach reaches company decision makers in order to bring needed jobs to Gallia County.”

The Ohio Economic Development Association’s Annual Excellence Awards program recognizes the achievements of individuals and organizations throughout Ohio in the areas of economic and workforce development.

According to Clark, the video was produced by Neon Cloud Productions with financial assistance from a Local Economic Advancement Program grant provided by American Electric Power last year. The video makes use of drone technology and pans aerial shots of downtown Gallipolis, Dan Evans Industrial Park in Bidwell as well as video overlaid with statistics of Gallia’s area vocational and college opportunities and more.

“I had wanted to do something like this for awhile and saw a video that showed off the best parts of a Texas community on YouTube,” said Clark. “We visited around 15 sites in the county to give marketing consultants an idea of our area assets and to see what it’s like to live in Gallia.”

Clark had expressed a desire to engage in such a project when AEP awarded the development office grant funding. AEP offered suggestions to Clark in production services. Clark said, coincidentally, they found the same company which had produced the video she had watched on YouTube. The production company apparently specialized in similar videos for other small communities like Gallia in search of economic development opportunities.

Planning for the video started in the summer of last year and the development office made use of statistics from organizations such as the US Bureau of Labor and other databases to flesh out the informational needs of the video. The video was shot in little over a day and timing was essential to make use of good weather. The production team shot video over the weekend of last Labor Day. Editing video proved to be a longer process along with graphics rendering.

“We wanted to give the feel of the quality of life that Gallia can provide,” said Clark.

Clark said early story ideas aimed to exhibit a sense of “industry, education, health care and the community” to video viewers.

Clark said the production had cost upwards of several thousand dollars with much of the bill being footed by AEP’s grant.

For more information and access to the video, visit www.growgallia.com.

Staff Report

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