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Case Study / Experience Scottsdale

They hired us to sell August in the desert. Then they hired us again.

Scottsdale's hardest month to fill is the one where it passes 110 degrees. They brought us in to make people want to come anyway, and when the campaign was over they came back and bought the photos too. Two years later they booked us for a second run, and bought the photos again.

A hot air balloon over the Sonoran Desert at sunrise in Scottsdale, Arizona
2

Campaigns, two years apart

3

Films, plus a Reel

2×

Photo licences bought outside the contract

110°F

The month they needed to sell

The brief

Everybody wants January.

Scottsdale in winter sells itself. Golf, blue sky, seventy degrees, and hotels full of people escaping somewhere colder. Nobody needs help with that.

August is the other thing. It's the month rooms sit empty, and it's also the only month a destination like this can actually host anybody, because the rest of the year the beds are already sold.

So the job was to make people want to visit a desert in summer. Not to pretend it isn't hot. To show what the heat gets you.

What it gets you

Nobody's there

The trails, the restaurants and the museums that have queues in February are empty in August. That's not a consolation, it's the reason to go then.

What it gets you

You can afford it

The resorts that price for winter demand are a different proposition in summer. Same property, same pool, different number.

What it gets you

The day starts early

A balloon at sunrise, Taliesin West before the heat lands, then indoors for the middle of the day. It's a different rhythm, and it works.

We went in August and filmed it honestly, heat included. Any destination with a season it struggles to fill has this same problem, and the answer is never to hide the thing people are worried about.

The photos

Then they asked to buy the stills.

Photography wasn't in the 2024 contract. We shoot stills anyway on every trip, and we sent a set over when the campaign wrapped because we thought they'd like them.

Scottsdale came back and licensed them for their own channels, on a separate invoice, after the work they'd paid for was already delivered.

Then they did it again in 2026. Same conversation, second campaign, second licence.

Sara in front of Camelback Mountain, Scottsdale
Taliesin West architecture in Scottsdale
Dining in Scottsdale
Sara at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art
Chris at an art installation in Scottsdale

2× Licences bought
outside the contract

A client spending money they didn't have to spend, twice, two years apart, is a harder thing to argue with than any number we could put on this page. They kept the photos. We kept the rights.

What we made

Two campaigns, two years apart.

2024 was the wide one. We went in August and made a thirty-four minute film about what a desert city is like in the month everybody avoids, with a Reel cut for people who'd never have considered it.

2026 went narrower. One film on the split between the Scottsdale most visitors see and the one they don't, and one on where to eat. Shot in March, out in May and June.

Eighty-two minutes of film about one city across the two campaigns, and every hosting business in the 2026 brief covered across the pair. None of it is an advert. They're the same films we'd make if nobody were paying, which is the only reason anybody watches them.

Watch the Content

The Deliverables

YouTube Video
Instagram Reel

Chris and Sara are not just engaging visual storytellers, they're also skilled marketers. They're creative and naturally curious, they understand how to hone in on a destination's goals and key messages, and they want to drive results. The cherry on top is that they're fun to work with, too.

Christina Dicksen
Christina Dicksen
Director of Communications, Experience Scottsdale
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