I began working on Biltmore Estate communications when admission was seven dollars and about 300,000 visitors dropped by each year. Some 15 years later, at the end of my creative journey with the Estate, guest numbers had risen to 750,000 and tickets to just under $30.
In the in-between years, I had the good fortune to design advertising programs and creative strategy for Biltmore around travel trends, gas prices, and a near continuous run of new openings, including the Downstairs, the Winery complex and Christmas (now the Estate’s most visitor-drenched time frame.)
We recast the Estate’s identity (as an “Estate” as opposed to a “House and Gardens”) and we positioned the property as a place of unfolding seasons and events, each celebrated in the grand manner of the Vanderbilt legacy with brand extensions into wines and furniture and other exquisite things.
Living close by, I often visit, and in 2003, wrote the Estate’s new visitor’s guide.
It’s great that we achieved such enormous successes over a short time frame but, truthfully, what I most cherish are the many years, at odd times of day, exploring, photographing and writing about this magnificent grande dame—infused as she is with such atrocious imagination. My daughters, I’m fairly certain, still consider Biltmore House their second childhood home.
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