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Filipa starts by explaining how VisitPortugal decided to go deep and immersive on content in order to deliver a layered and deep-level discovery through never-ending discovery, something that literature can offer as you revisit there's always an opportunity to see things from a different angle.

Based on the book "Journey to Portugal" written by Saramago, the places described by Saramago, the landscapes, the communities and the natural and cultural heritage were revisited.

One of the key things here is how they've been able to powerfully translate the immaterial of culture into this digital environment where it's easy to connect with the subject and discover it allows users to explore the subject, whether or not they are aficionados. This is where programmatic media buying also helps bring new audiences into the topic.

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Digitally Immersive Story

A travel book, Journey to Portugal, as well as 'live backstage coverage' form part of the wider campaign both with stories being shared live throughout the production work to keep the brand alive but then featured on the platform of the finished campaign, so people can go and re-watch and discover different elements of the 'creation of'.

The platform itself brings a truly interactive discovery of the content, where users can scroll horizontally as well as vertically as well as zooming right down to the street level on maps with the integration of Google Earth to discover specific places featured in the story.

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Featuring Places, Stories and Authors

The development required a continual discovery of the places featured in the literature, where the pre-production work was more intense than it would traditionally be given that each angle of a street or a riverbank can change the reflection point hugely in terms of how the story plays out in the content.

For each place featured, there are usually different suggestions crossing nature, culture and heritage more often than not, but things like gastronomy and wine are also part of it. This is where the writers play a key role in the creation of the story, where their personal recommendations are featured in each location.

This is then complimented with an overview of the place provided by VisitPortugal, to add context to the actual location.

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Episodic Video Content

There were 12 Episodes, each featuring a cinematic approach to telling his story, always set in a specific place where reading the book, inspired by the setting and surroundings, helps bring the unique qualities of both the author and the detail of the environment to life - giving a glimpse into his creative ideas and inspiration.

In storyboarding each video, the idea was to show the individual author, walking book in hand through different inspirational scenes and environments in each destination, where they also stop to read segments of the literature.

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Delivering as a Small Team

The team behind the entire concept never involved more than seven people, a small team dynamic that Filipa says is essential to getting the creative approach right. She emphasises that only minimal resources were required to pull everything together, what really matters is that the team is committed, brings a strong mix of creative skills and invests themselves personally in the creation of something epic.

At the same time, Filipa explains the large in-house resources and capabilities that exist within Turismo de Portugal mean that they have to work in a very open, transparent and collaborative way so that everyone across all teams can play a role in activation, bringing the campaign and content to life across the different environments and channels. As she explains, this agile way of working is great for bringing everyone into the project, leading to a lot of corridor and elevator meetings but also creating an environment where ideas can flourish within and across the organisation.