Dive Into the Gulf | Miles Media Partnership
Crafting an immersive, high-impact visual library that transforms destination marketing into a lifestyle.
Visit St. Pete / Clearwater partnered with Miles Partnership on an intensive, seven-day production to completely reimagine how audiences experience the region's iconic Gulf waters. Working alongside Brianne Zulauf Maciejowski (VP of Odyssey Studio) and Juliana Bavelloni Contreras (Art Director at Miles Media Partnership), we set out to capture the Dive Into the Gulf initiative creating inspirational, emotive, and highly engaging assets that make viewers feel as if they are already in the destination. The result was a robust, multi-dimensional asset library built to feed a dynamic 4-story-block digital experience. Implemented across web, digital, print, and social platforms.
Image Description: Dive Into the Gulf Visuals for DMO Campaign Visit St. Pete/Clearwater & Miles Media Partnership
Image Description: Culinary visuals for DMO / Visit St. Pete/Clearwater
The shoot delivered a massive, multi-format media library tailored to complex digital storytelling. Across the rigorous 7-day production, we captured content designed for full-screen looping videos, multi-format photo compositions (portrait, landscape, and square), and specialized quote-block background imagery.
From fast-paced jet ski action to sophisticated sailboat excursions, the project required a hands-on approach to production. To guarantee the authentic, "imagine yourself here" vibe of the brief, the team sourced local talent, so that the people in front of the lens perfectly matched the creative vision.
Image Description: Dive Into the Gulf Visuals for DMO Campaign Visit St. Pete/Clearwater & Miles Media Partnership
To shift away from traditional, detached travel imagery, our strategy focused on deep immersion. We prioritized capturing a wide range of authentic moments. The goal was to build a narrative that starts in the shallows and moves deeper into the water lifestyle, matching the changing tempo and energy of the Gulf.
Our approach required balancing maritime logistics with aesthetic standards. To make sure the water looked calm, inviting, and premium, we actively navigated unpredictable environmental challenges, including pivoting schedules around a local Red Tide outbreak and timing our sailboat and jet ski shoots perfectly to avoid choppy conditions.
Image Description: Dive Into the Gulf Visuals for DMO Campaign Visit St. Pete/Clearwater & Miles Media Partnership
Image Description: Behind the Scenes of Dive Into the Gulf Visuals for DMO Campaign Visit St. Pete/Clearwater & Miles Media Partnership
The resulting photography became a foundational asset for Visit St. Pete / Clearwater’s digital ecosystem, directly servicing a massive audience footprint. Built to scale for a DMO that welcomes roughly 15.3 million total annual visitors, these assets were deployed to anchor web traffic that averages between 300,000 and 500,000 monthly sessions (roughly 3.6 million to 6 million sessions annually).
The imagery was strategically rolled out to capture maximum consumer attention during peak late winter and spring planning months (January through April). By delivering a versatile array of premium lifestyle stills, the campaign successfully transformed standard destination promotion into an enviable lifestyle, proving the lasting value of an expertly executed asset refresh.
Click below to watch the video from the project.
I have had the pleasure of partnering with Jacob on numerous campaigns over the years, and he loves pushing his craft to new levels. He is always doing whatever it takes to capture amazing imagery and attain exactly what the client is looking for, no matter what elements or logistics a shoot throws at us. Passionate, adaptable, always-ready, and awesome to work with… just a few of the words I would use to describe Jacob.
— Brianne Maciejowski, Vice President of Odyssey, The Studio at Miles Partnership