Considering its long history, its heyday as a railroad hub, and its stunningly beautiful mountains and rivers, the Alleghany Highlands was a blank slate when Mikula-Harris was chosen to develop a tourism brand.

Building a brand from scratch is both exciting and daunting. Solid research and plenty of input from local tourism partners are critical to success. It’s also important to spend time in the community getting to understand what makes the destination special. Accurately capturing the personality of a place and differentiating it from others are equally important to our team.

The ad campaign focused on experiences that are “Uniquely Alleghany.” It has been a very popular campaign both inside the community and beyond, spawning the use of the hashtag #UniquelyAlleghany.

If you have driven between Lynchburg and Roanoke on busy Route 460, you have passed through Bedford and may not even have known about it. Perhaps you would have stayed longer if you knew about the cool downtown, the wineries or the four world-class attractions like the Blue Ridge Parkway, National D-Day Memorial, Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest and Smith Mountain Lake.

With such great assets, tourism could be as important to Bedford as it is in places like Williamsburg and Charlottesville. That’s why they hired Mikula-Harris to develop the brand strategy, ad campaign, website and more.

One piece of the strategy is to change the perception of Bedford as a pass-through location between two cities. It’s now being marketed as Destination Bedford. And there is nothing ordinary about it.