Helping new audiences connect with Gettysburg

Gettysburg had name recognition. The Foundation’s marketing team wanted to build a deeper sense of relevance, particularly among younger families and people who might never describe themselves as Civil War enthusiasts.

Its existing visitor video explained the facilities and touring options. The new film needed to help people imagine what the experience could mean to them and their children, while respecting the history and the people who care deeply about it.

That goal supported the Foundation’s broader strategy: invite people to visit, encourage them to learn, and give them a reason to support the place’s future.

We proposed The ground we share, a concept organized around the visitor’s emotional experience: arrival, immersion, reflection, and an invitation to carry something forward.

In conversations with the Foundation’s marketing team, we explored how that experience could express Gettysburg’s continuing civic significance. The creative task was to make an institutional ambition feel personal and believable.

Real people became the center of the approach. Working with participants identified by the Foundation, we captured the perspectives of visitors, families, and people connected to the place. Their accounts gave us the material to build a story about what a visit can mean.

Historical interpretation provided context. Visitors’ responses connected that history to learning, gratitude, service, and shared experience. The edit brought those voices together around a question a prospective visitor could recognize: What might my family take away from being here?

One exchange captures the approach. A child talks about learning what the country has been through and how people have come together to overcome challenges. An adult responds:

“The fact that she talks like that means that the time we’ve spent here has worked. That she’s gotten something from this.”

The exchange gives a parent something specific to consider: a child making sense of history in her own words, and an adult recognizing that the experience has stayed with her.

Elsewhere, visitors describe the difference between reading about the Civil War and standing on the battlefield. Those firsthand responses give the Foundation’s message of relevance a human voice.