MANSFIELD — Beau Roberts didn’t find new things this year when he traveled Richland County, shooting video for a countywide branding campaign.
Instead, the editor and videographer for DRM Productions of Mansfield spent countless hours capturing familiar moments, from Shiloh to Bellville and all points in-between.
“I always say that our duty to the community at DRM is to help scream louder,” DRM owner Jay Miller said after a nearly 90-second video brand teaser was unveiled Tuesday morning during a Richland County commissioners’ meeting.
“There are so many amazing things going on in this area and our communities that people, I’m surprised have lived their whole lives here, and not known about. So our job is to scream from the mountaintops that these things exist,” said Miller, whose company has been commissioned to do the work.
“We’ve been to every single mountaintop across the county between these couple videos we’re working on. Beau has been just run ragged,” Miller said with a laugh.
The video includes parts of 20 different events and locations out of more than 100 that DRM shot during the effort thus far, according to Miller.
Commissioners are working with the City of Mansfield, Destination-Mansfield Richland County and the Richland Area Chamber & Economic Development to produce the videos as part of a countywide branding campaign that began in 2022.
The initial teaser video dubbed Richland County as a “Family of Communities.”
Miller was joined at the meeting Tuesday by Lee Tasseff, president of Destination Mansfield-Richland County and Sandy Messner, the chamber’s marketing and communications director.
Chamber CEO Jodie Perry also attended, though she will be leaving her current position in a couple of weeks to become Mansfield’s new mayor in January.
“I think this video particularly captures the brand in terms of we are a family of communities. You’ll look at the video and smile,” Commissioner Tony Vero said.
Messner agreed.
“This concept of the community brand really encompasses who we are as a county, We’re business, growth-minded people. We’re independent people. We’re people that turn tenacity into triumph is one of the taglines,” Messner said.
“We’re makers, dreamers, doers, and, and all of this is encompassed in the video and what’s to come in the future. It shows who we are as a people. It’s not just a thought. It’s more of a feeling. It’s who we are,” she said.
(Photos below from Tuesday morning’s Richland County commissioners meeting.)
Longer-form videos are also in the works for early 2024, which will again capture the brand identified last year, according to Tasseff, who cited the narrative identified in the first part of the branding message:
“We act upon the need for innovation, invention and reinterpretation. We are outspoken and achievement-driven, dedicated and hardworking, with a strong belief in the value of inner expression, quiet contemplation and the soul-inspiring replenishment of the great outdoors.
“Today, we are all creators, sharing a collective vision, deeply rooted in the success of our past.
“Generation after generation, forging imagination and prosperity.”
“We are building momentum, led by the dreamers of now.”
“We are a story in the making and yours to transform.
“Come, make it in Mansfield. Welcome home.”
“When you read (that narrative), it screams that it’s a narration for a video. It tells a story. And that was the whole idea behind the brand,” Tasseff said.
“This video is utilizing that script as the core script edited down for time and we’re building the video around it. So it does tell the story and it moves. It’s going to be all over the place. It’ll have narration, it’ll have music behind it,” he said.
Miller said the video being recorded can be used in a variety of ways.
“It’s crazy to be in this many different places and producing videos that are so uniquely different. That’s what’s exciting about it,” Miller said. “There is so much going on in our community that we can produce multiple videos and they don’t have overlap.”
The video teaser, and subsequent, will be found in various places, such was the Brand Richland website, City of Mansfield website and the Richland County website.
The key is to ask others, including other communities and residents, to share the video with hashtags like #BrandRichland and #familyofcommunities.