South Walton Culinary Experiences Campaign
Industry
Services
The Challenge
With more than 200 restaurants and award-winning chefs championing the “Gulf-to-Table” movement, South Walton offers a culinary experience that sets it apart from competing beach destinations. However, recent economic pressures including inflation and decreased occupancy rates have negatively impacted local restaurant partners, highlighting the need to drive awareness and visitation through a focused culinary lens.
To meet this need, Zehnder created a campaign to tell the region’s dining story with a video-first strategy, bringing to life the passion, creativity, and flavor behind South Walton’s food scene. By showcasing locally sourced ingredients and the chefs behind gourmet dishes crafted from them, we elevated South Walton’s image as a destination for discerning travelers. The campaign was amplified across multiple channels, including in-person activations, paid media, social media, digital platforms, the destination website, and select print formats, ensuring broad reach and strong alignment with the target audience’s interests.
The Strategy
To authentically convey the region’s signature flavors, we first created the South Walton Cookbook featuring recipes from local chefs to give visitors a taste of paradise in between their trips.
Inspired by its enthusiastic reception, we approached this new challenge by developing an enticing culinary video series. In the Kitchen placed South Walton chefs at the center of the narrative, focusing on their diverse cuisines and personalities. Rather than relying on traditional promotional content, we chose a storytelling approach, allowing the chefs themselves to express their passion, backgrounds, and the artistry that defines dining in South Walton. This strategy aligned with our objective of promoting the destination’s culinary distinctiveness and reaching food-minded travelers seeking meaningful, upscale experiences.
The first installment featured three of South Walton’s most notable chefs: Dan Vargo, Fleetwood Covington, and Nikhil Abuvala. Each video was filmed in the chefs’ respective kitchens, blending candid interviews with immersive visuals. Chef Vargo shared how surfing fuels his culinary creativity. Chef Covington’s background as a concert pianist shaped not only his precision in the kitchen but also provided the video soundtrack. Chef Abuvala’s tattoos served as visual metaphors for his deep-rooted culinary heritage and philosophy. These personal narratives forge emotional connections with the viewer, positioning South Walton as a destination where dining is more than just a meal — it’s an experience.
The videos were housed on YouTube with titles, descriptions, and tags optimized for searchability, while also anchoring the redesigned Culinary Experiences page on VisitSouthWalton.com. This content hub features dynamic video previews, chef articles, blog entries, and restaurant listings, inviting users to explore South Walton’s culinary culture in depth.
To further engage our audience, we integrated the chefs into key culinary events such as Chicago Gourmet and the New York City Wine & Food Festival, where they brought South Walton flavor to a national stage with their specialty dishes. Their participation was teased and supported through social media, with videos providing pre- and post-event content, driving engagement and reinforcing the destination’s culinary credibility.
To maximize reach, we built a strategic media plan to rotate the video content across diverse channels including print, added value, and advertorials. Digital distribution included Meta, Pinterest, YouTube, Southwest in-flight video, CTV, programmatic video, Modern Luxury preroll, and linear TV. This omnichannel approach ensured our target audience encountered the South Walton culinary story across multiple touchpoints: at home, in-flight, and on the go.
The Results
Walton County Tourism commissioned a marketing ROI study with their partner research firm. According to the study, for every dollar Walton County government invests in Walton County Tourism advertising, Walton County government receives $15.17 in county governmental revenues – including advertising within the culinary campaign.
South Walton chefs have reported increased interest and activity around their culinary endeavors, and the client continues to see restaurants/food among the top reasons people visit the destination. The campaign continues to resonate with the discerning high household income visitors the destination seeks, successfully showcasing South Walton’s culinary prowess.
Over the first 5 months of the campaign:
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