Visit Jericho

PROJECT: Visit Jericho
CLIENT: Paul Southouse Architects & Oxford City Council
YEAR: 2023

Visit Jericho was a destination initiative designed to encourage visitors to explore Jericho, one of Oxford’s most distinctive neighbourhoods, beyond the city’s established tourist routes. We were faced with the challenge of how a little-known neighbourhood could welcome more visitors without losing the character that makes it worth visiting. Aetia was brought on to build a thoughtful visual identity and targeted communication strategy to transform Visit Jericho from a directory of local businesses into a resource inviting visitors to the prioritise neighbourhood on their trips to Oxford.

We began with ethnographic and cultural research, speaking with residents and local businesses, spending time across the neighbourhood and tracing its industrial, printing, literary, musical and cultural history. We also mapped how visitors already moved through Oxford, identifying the physical touchpoints — hotels, transport links, tourist attractions, information points and local businesses — where Jericho could naturally enter the visitor journey.

Our research led to the development a launch strategy centred on out-of-home placement and physical discovery rather than digital marketing alone. We then developed a brand identity inspired by Jericho’s printing heritage, commissioned a local designer to create a hand-stamped wordmark using archival letterpress components. We also produced a six-page broadsheet featuring local recommendations, itineraries, editorial and stories. Ten local partnerships helped distribute the guide through the visitor network, while a launch film brought the neighbourhood to life through documentary footage and a local poet’s voiceover.

The strategy grew Visit Jericho’s audience by 500%, while the film became the initiative’s most-watched piece of content to date. The project reinforced the value of offline marketing and local collaboration in making destination storytelling richer, more specific and more sustainable.