Stretching the Concept Without Breaking It

How Grant County’s Travel Planner Turned “Nature’s Playground” into a Story Only It Could Tell

Quick experiment: pull up the websites of 10 destinations and count how many promise “nature.”

Spoiler alert: it’s all of them.

Nature is a popular promise in destination marketing, and for good reason. In the age of information overload, when nightly doomscrolling has become as routine as brushing your teeth, people crave trees, water, trails and big skies. As a brand platform, nature provides a tried-and-true solid ground.

But there are opportunities left on the table with a platform as broad as nature. Oftentimes, destination brands tell visitors what kind of place it is, not what makes it different from the next place with a lake and a trailhead. That was the puzzle when Grant County Tourism brought us in to develop the theme for its 2026 Travel Planner.

A strong concept with room to grow.

Grant County’s tourism brand is “Nature’s Playground,” and it earns its keep with nature through its rocky geography, which is relatively unique compared to the lush treetops found in neighboring counties. “Playground” promises fun. It signals recreation and gives partners across the county something to rally around.

A visitor guide or travel planner is a different animal from a parent brand. It’s the longest, most detailed conversation a destination brand has with its audience, and it’s where a brand promise can get specific. Grant County has a uniquely positioned story few places can match: a landscape shaped by Ice Age floods, where ancient geology sets the stage for modern adventure.

The task at hand required us to let the planner elaborate on “Nature’s Playground” without saying anything completely different.

Extend, don’t replace.

Our answer was “Ancient Playground.”

One shift in the bedrock of the brand, and it unearthed an entire layer to excavate beneath the surface — pun intended. “Playground” stayed, so the planner connects instantly to everything else Grant County puts into the world, especially its newly developed app. Partners recognize it, and visitors who’ve seen the brand elsewhere feel right at home.

“Ancient” adds an edge to the experience, inviting a reader to take a closer look. It turns a promise any destination could make into one that Grant County can back up with the landscape itself: somewhere old enough to have stories and young enough to play.

 “Ancient” and “playground” rarely share a sentence, which makes the idea memorable. Most ancient things come with a velvet rope and an overly attentive security guard. Conversely, your mind’s eye will likely see a plastic apparatus surrounded by beauty bark when you think of the word “playground.”

Grant County also boasts The Gorge Amphitheatre, an iconic concert venue that attracts boot-stomping country fans and glow-stick-waving ravers alike — an ancient setting for modern parties.

Let the brand be the umbrella.

The takeaway for brands with conflicting concepts: stretch. Don’t bend or it will break.

Let the brand be the umbrella. The critical task of your parent brand is just to hold everything together. It doesn’t necessarily have to say everything at once.

From there, extend or stretch the concept. Tie every extension to something recognizable so it reads as an evolution rather than a departure.

A strong concept doesn’t have to be rewritten to be sharpened. Sometimes it just needs one more word.

Read more about our work with Grant County.