I just wrapped up a project for WCCO TV, the CBS-owned station here in Minneapolis. They contacted me, asking if I could help them re-launch their Instagram account in conjunction with the Minnesota State Fair, which is an enormously popular 12-day event here in Minnesota. While WCCO is the number 1 TV news station in Minneapolis/St. Paul, they hadn’t spent as much time developing all of their social media accounts, but they wanted to change that, and felt the state fair was a good time to make the move.

I had a great meeting with the general manager, creative director, and promotions director, where I gave them the overview of how Instagram worked, and listened to what they wanted to do. Then I went home and put on my thinking cap, and came up with a concept for how I could help them with their campaign.

My idea was to show people MY state fair, and photograph the fair from my own point of view, share that on my account as well as WCCO’s, and promote the campaign on their broadcast and other media to encourage their audience to share their own unique points of view about the fair. Additionally, I suggested we hire four additional Instagram “influencers” to promote the campaign to their own followers.

In my creative brief I wrote some copy as I imagined their news anchors could pitch the project to their audience: “The Minnesota State Fair is so big and offers so many unique things to do that two people can go there and have completely different experiences. We’ve all got our favorite things that we like to do at the fair. Show us YOUR favorite things about the Minnesota State Fair by taking a photo and posting it to social media with the tag #MyStateFair”

The team at WCCO loved the idea, and gave me the go-ahead to get the project rolling. And so I wrote down some guidelines for the project so that we’d all know what we were agreeing to, and once the legal department gave their blessing, I got busy calling some other respected Minnesota Instagrammers.

Since the whole idea of the project was to photograph the fair from each person’s point of view, I chose photographers that have different styles and storytelling sensibilities. Additionally, I chose people whose had followings that would be a good match for the subject matter and WCCO. Once I had everyone lined up, I organized the schedule so that there would be someone at the fair (roughly) every other day during its run. Some of us went early in the morning, and others captured afternoon and evening events at the fair.

Each photographer gave the tv station 5 photos that they shot that day, and also posted the first photo to their own Instagram account to let their followers know that they were “taking over” the WCCO account for the day. We each wrote our own captions, written in the first person, to clearly communicate that we were “live ‘gramming” the fair. Photos were posted every two to three hours throughout the day.

It was a lot of pressure for all 5 of us photographers to shoot, edit, and caption 5 photos “live” in the midst of the crowds, noise and heat. We’re all more accustomed to having more time to shoot and edit photos. But it was a fun type of pressure to look for visual storytelling opportunities (and we certainly had plenty of food-on-a-stick options to fuel our creativity.

Additionally, each photographer spent time browsing the #mystatefair tag, to interact with other people that were sharing their own state fair experiences. I also spent time browsing the other tags for the MN State Fair, looking for photos that I thought would be good for the project, and asking those people to use the #mystatefair tag.

Lastly, the whole project was promoted via WCCO’s social media channels as well as during the daily news broadcasts. This helped bring awareness to the project from their viewing audience that might not have previously engaged with the station on their Instagram account.

The project was a huge success. The client was thrilled with the quality of photos that the influencers created, and also with the photos that everyone else posted too. In addition to posting the all influencers photos, WCCO also featured several photos each day on their Instagram account as well as during news broadcasts. Their Instagram following more than doubled during the 12 days, and the #MyStateFair tag generated over 1400 photographs and videos.

Thank you, WCCO, for this opportunity, and congrats on the relaunch of your account! (And thanks to my photographers for all their great work! Their websites/portfolios are below.)

ClientWCCOProjectMy State FairYear2015PhotogsRita Farmer (@mamacita.rita) Wing Ta (@canarygrey) Paul Johnson (@paul_johnstone) Jill Emmer (@shineonyoucraydiamond) Eric Mueller (@ericmueller)