Visit Seattle leans on the locals for new series with Vox Creative

The premise is decidedly lo-fi. Mike Greenfield, one of the brothers of the Brooklyn-based cooking duo Brothers Green Eats, visits Seattle without the aid of technology. With no phone or even a newspaper for that matter, Greenfield relies solely on recommendations from people in Seattle.

“As a visitor, getting to know a city can be as easy as a quick Google Map search for its best attractions or a scan of the latest Yelp reviews for hot, trendy restaurants,” said Ali Daniels, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of Visit Seattle. “But getting to the heart of what makes a city great often takes knowing someone who lives there. Crowdsourced does just that – it takes the culmination of generations of locals-only knowledge of Seattle, uncovers and shares it with anyone who finds themselves in this incredible city.”

The first episode, Food From the Sea, tips its hat to The Emerald City’s love of fish and seafood and Greenfield makes his way, armed with a Polaroid camera, to some of the city’s most loved-by-the-locals places including Taylor Shellfish, Terra Plata, Pike Place Market and legendary sushi restaurant Shiro’s. Additionally, Greenfield gets hands-on, learning about oyster farming and fish mongering.

Upcoming episodes feature and celebrate other parts of the city’s story, including content around the LGBTQ community, its maker culture and more. The series also includes a zine that follows each traveler’s adventure scrapbook-style.

The series comes on the heels of recent work by director Matty Brown, who was awarded a $25,000 grant to make a film about Seattle’s independent spirit, featured during the Independent Spirit Awards on IFC.

Crowdsourced is the tenth branded entertainment series created by Visit Seattle and the sixth launched by PB& in the last 16 months. Since pivoting its content offering in 2015, the organization has seen a massive lift, driving over 70 million minutes of watch time on YouTube alone. The approach has also led to significantly increased site traffic and a record number of visitors (almost 40 million) to Seattle in 2017.

The series lives on Visitseattle.tv, Visit Seattle on YouTube with additional distribution from Vox Media.

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