Making Of:

Blacksburg Farmers Market

Website and Photoessay Series

Showcasing Why WE Love This Region

Working alongside staff from Onward NRV, our team collaboratively developed multimedia assets for use in a campaign that showcases the New River Valley and promotes the many reasons to live and work in the area.

During their one month campaign, these assets helped bring awareness, engagement, and business advocacy well beyond the region. Part of a 5-year strategic plan, this campaign generated 5,587 website visits, 297,404 video views in one month’s time, and reached nearly half a million users.

While this project and narrative model could be adapted for many other places, work like this is important to us because we’re close to it. We live and work here and truly wanted to show off why we love it.

These videos will be useful for years to come and will continue to be seen and promoted in many ways: online, at events, in advertising—the list is endless! Producing content like this is a long-term investment for marketing success.

Locations and Collaborators

Each host location met our crew and project collaborators with absolutely open arms.

Working with our production crew, municipalities, and businesses throughout the region to pull this off, work like this truly takes a village. Our team handles the coordination, narrative development, model recruitment, and production for projects like this one.

Municipal Partners

The many counties, cities, and towns in our region are always open to collaborations. Many thanks to those that welcomed us in for this project:

  • Town of Blacksburg

  • Town of Christiansburg

  • Floyd County

  • Giles County

  • Pulaski County

  • Montgomery County

  • Radford City

  • We worked with Christiansburg Run Club for one quick shot that showcased community collaboration and the many activities available to NRV residents.

  • We've worked with Lichen or Knot on a variety of projects over the years, highlighting retail's role in tourism and livability regionally. It was wonderful to film in their plant shop in Floyd, Virginia!

  • Iron for Zion is a gym and fitness center located in Fairlawn, Virginia. The owner, Anthony Oretade, brought a level of energy and excitement that truly helped drive this whole project.

  • Iron Tree Brewing Company is a visionary brewery, the first of its kind in Christiansburg, Virginia. They host a variety of community events and are excellent stewards of our community.

  • Patrick Enterprises is a custom manufacturing, metal fabrication, welding, and machine shop located in Giles County, Virginia. They welcomed our crew and let us capture some truly unique drone content for this project.

  • Troika Contemporary Crafts is an art studio in Floyd, Virginia. Alongside many retailers in Floyd, they lead the charge regionally for arts and tourism.

  • Twisted Liquid is a fine dining restaurant located in Blacksburg, Virginia. They are truly elevating the food scene here locally with amazing food and cocktails in a small town environment.

  • The Highlander is the region's newest premiere lodging and rooftop entertaining asset. They provide a truly unique experience to the New River Valley. We're grateful to help showcase that!

  • Located in Dublin, Virginia, Red Sun Farms shows off beautifully the innovative nature of our region. A massive greenhouse with incredible automations, this truly helped showcase our region.

  • The Virginia Tech CRC and CoGro Labs is an innovator incubator for businesses of all size in our region. It's always wonderful to work with them to showcase this region's potential.

Team Members

  • Jonathan Roberts

    Lead Photographer, Behind-the-Scenes

    Jonathan produced the still photography for this project. Capturing content at each event as well as filming behind-the-scenes content, he produced media throughout this project.

  • Cheyenne Feathers, M.S.

    Web Developer

  • Morgan Phillips

    Project Manager

Want to talk with our team?

We’re happy to chat if you’re interested in this work, answer questions about our process, or get started on a new project for you or your organization!

Delivery and Distribution

In addition to the video deliverables, our team captured stills during each event, as well as during some b-roll shoots with individuals and businesses.

Horizontal videos, vertical videos for social media, and still photography were all packaged and delivered to our client. In addition, supplemental files for thumbnails and captions were all put together to make distribution easier on the Onward staff.

Delivering quality assets throughout the whole process is crucial to success!

Lessons Learned

Typical logistical challenges came up; however, this project ran very smoothly because of the clear communication between the Aspire team and Onward NRV representatives.

In our region, this project was possible because of our existing network and connections here. Careful consideration will be made in the future for any projects we do of this scale in other places. Without a lot of eager collaborators, something like wouldn’t be nearly as successful.

A man working on assembling or repairing a drone with exposed wiring on a wooden table.
A woman in a black sleeveless top creates a fog-like effect with dry ice in a tall, curved glass vessel behind a bar counter, with bottles of alcohol on shelves in the background.
A man wearing a gray hoodie and a baseball cap stands next to a weightlifting barbell on a blue squat rack in a gym, looking at the camera with a serious expression.
Woman working at a booth for Riverstone VA Organic Farm at an outdoor market, with a large colorful banner displaying vegetables and the farm's contact information in the background.
Aerial view of a suburban neighborhood with houses, trees, lawns, and paved streets, some with solar panels on the roofs, during daytime.
A man in a greenhouse, wearing blue shoe covers, kneeling and harvesting tomatoes from a vine.
A scientist wearing a white lab coat and blue gloves is using a pipette to transfer liquid into a small container in a laboratory. There are lab instruments and glassware with orange and blue liquids on the black countertop.
A smiling woman sitting at a bar with two glasses of beer, one with a yellow label that says 'Iron Tree Brewing Company' and the other with a dark amber color.
A man with long curly hair and a woman with straight brown hair sharing a bright red cocktail with garnishes at a bar or restaurant.