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Miguel Angel Pérez, from Visit Valencia, presented how a branding and communication story can be successfully developed and transmitted. Valencia has been chosen in 2021 as the best city in the world to live in by ex-pats, but also as the healthiest destination in the world.

He started by providing an overview of the content creation funnel, by means of which he highlighted that attracting potential tourists into our funnel is essential. The way to achieve this is to produce unique content, which Miguel Angel exemplified through a few campaigns from Visit Valencia.

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The first campaign he presented was 'The Holy Grail', which talks about the grail cup used in the last supper over 2.000 years ago by Jesus and that is currently held in Valencia. This video campaign has been awarded six times internationally and has been awarded the third place in the people's choice award category. The video covers the story and history of the cup, as well as related narratives, such as its trip from Jerusalem to Rome and the Last Supper.

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Miguel Angel then presented their Fallas Festival campaign. He started off by explaining that this festival was first cancelled on the 10th of March 2020 due to the pandemic, and he highlighted that this is a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. In March 2021, the festival was again not celebrated due to Covid, which led them to create a campaign that was then translated into 10 different languages. Its purpose was to celebrate some activities related to the festival online and to generate positive news about the festival. The campaign was so successful that they decided to create an exhibition about the fallas at the airport in Valencia. This exhibition could be activated through QR codes, which featured audio and video content.

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He then talked about the World Design Capital campaign. Miguel Angel explained how they created a live and ongoing mapping of Valencia through its galleries, restaurants, museums, cafes, hotels, shops, recreative spaces, to allow travellers to design their itinerary around the city and discover less popular areas of the destination.

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Miguel Angel also took us through Valencia being chosen as the European Capital of Smart Tourism for 2022. Why Valencia? He explained that Valencia offers innovations with a Mediterranean twist, a combination of technology and design with quality of life and the warmest welcome. In addition, creativity is in their genes and they use it constantly to rise to every challenge and leave a positive legacy. Lastly, they are smart at heart, leading the way and happy to share their achievements and plans.

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Lastly, Miguel Angel talked about the Gay Games 2026 campaign, for which they were chosen as the next host city. He explained that in their logo for this event, they used the letter V to represent Valencia and represent the LGTBQ+ sports games. Despite their position against other cities which were financially stronger, they still managed to win due to their LGTBQ centric view featuring the city, their 320 days of sun per year, and light of diversity moto.

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At the end of his talk, Nick highlighted that he was impressed as to how they don't focus on a single market or brand, but instead tap into different things to move forward.

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From Nick's conclusions about his talk, Miguel Angel highlighted once again that they launching different campaigns for different groups. He explained that they have over 400 members at Visit Valencia, which belong to different clusters with which they work, such as local companies, retailers, the education and health sectors, etc...; which they do to attract people with different but specific interests to Valencia.

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What’s the process of creating creative content?

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Miguel Angel explained that for each video they work with different partners, mainly from Valencia. Their focus relies very strongly on the story and the narrative, trying to reflect the locals' passions and strengths very clearly.