Client
Okefenokee Swamp Park • Waycross, GA
Okefenokee Adventures • Folkston, GAGeorgia, USA
Okefenokee Adventures • Folkston, GA
Scope
Content & digital communication strategy • Dual-brand identity & messaging • Social media management • Science communication • Press & partner toolkits • UNESCO World Heritage announcement campaign
Overview
The Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge is one of the largest intact freshwater ecosystems on Earth — more than 400,000 acres of blackwater prairie, cypress forest, and peat, home to over 1,200 species of plants and animals.
Two organizations are its public gateways: Okefenokee Swamp Park in Waycross, the education-forward, family-friendly entrance, and Okefenokee Adventures in Folkston, the overnight-expedition entrance and the refuge’s official guiding service.
Our goal was twofold — reposition both brands from visitor-services businesses into trusted conservation voices for a world-class ecosystem, and design the entire communications architecture around a once-in-a-generation moment: after 40 years of effort, the Okefenokee’s bid for UNESCO World Heritage status was heading to a vote.
On July 25, 2026, the Okefenokee was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The campaign we built was ready to meet it.
UNESCO World Heritage Site July 2026
~3x Engagement per post
>2xReachper post
1,400+ Community Rebuilt in 18 Days
Photo by Lauren Yoho
The Challenge
Both organizations were doing two jobs at once: stewarding a globally significant swamp, and running the wilderness experiences and educational programming that let people encounter it. The question became clear:
How do you build a social presence that captures the guest experience, speaks credibly to conservation peers about landscape-scale stewardship, and makes the case that hands-on experiences are exactly how people come to protect a place?
We didn’t pick a lane. We showed that the guest experience is the conservation story — that paddling and protecting the ecosystem are two halves of one idea.
Photography by Lauren Yoho
Our Approach
We gave each channel a single job and let it do that job well.
1. Audit. We assessed every channel against the organizations’ Master Interpretive Plan, so the strategy grew out of the institution’s own mission, not out of social trends.
2. Split and test. We assigned each platform the audience it serves best. Instagram went experience-forward: the feeling of being in the swamp. LinkedIn became the peer channel, where the organization speaks to conservation professionals about what it’s doing at scale. Facebook carried the community conversation.
No channel diluted itself trying to reach everyone.
3. Build repeatable formats. We ran two months of pilot content, cut what didn’t land, and doubled down on what did. Compared against the prior year, the pilot more than doubled reach per post and nearly tripled engagement. Short-form video emerged as the runaway format, driving roughly 3× the resonance of everything else.
That performance earned Rickel Jones Creative an ongoing scope to manage Okefenokee Swamp Park & Adventure’s channels.
We assigned each platform the audience it serves best. No channel diluted itself trying to reach everyone.
Rebuilding an Audience From Zero
The most demanding moment came when the Okefenokee Adventures Instagram account had to be relaunched from scratch. Rather than let years of audience and booking equity evaporate, we ran a concentrated migration push and rebuilt the entire 1,400+ follower community in 18 days — protecting the brand’s reach, and its revenue, through what could have been a total reset.
1.7M Views
92.9K Interactions
1.6K New Followers
in the first 30 days
Ready for the Influx
UNESCO status brings visitors. A Conservation Fund study projected inscription could nearly double annual visitation, from roughly 800,000 today toward 1.4–1.6 million by 2035. The digital front door is where new visitors form a first impression, plan a trip, and decide whether to book.
The work was about making sure the channels could carry the weight of the attention when it came. By inscription day, both brands had distinct voices, defined channel roles, repeatable content systems, and a rebuilt, protected audience.
Photography by Lauren Yoho and Sara Sheehy
World Heritage Inscription Day
All pieces of the announcement were staged in advance and held under embargo tied to the World Heritage Committee’s session.
- Media Kit (photo, video, logos, story angles, facts and figures, etc.)
- Partner Toolkit (suggested post copy, carousel images, social handles, tags, and credits)
- Announcement video from Executive Director Kim Bednarek
- Staff Thank You video compilation
On July 25, 2026, meeting in Busan, South Korea, the World Heritage Committee inscribed the Okefenokee — the 27th World Heritage Site in the United States, Georgia’s first, and the first managed entirely by the National Wildlife Refuge System. Executive Director Kim Bednarek accepted it publicly, framing the designation not as a finish line but as a commitment to keep the swamp wild and thriving for generations.
The story ran nationally, and Okefenokee Swamp Park’s combined channel follower rate accelerated nearly 2,700% over its prior daily pace.
Impact
Two organizations known mainly for tours and camping walked into the global spotlight with something far more valuable:
- A distinct voice for each brand, and a clear job for each channel
- Stewardship woven organically into content people actually wanted to see
- A rebuilt, protected audience on a from-zero account
- Repeatable content systems the organization can sustain — and an ongoing partnership to run them
- Digital channels prepared for the visitor surge a World Heritage designation brings
The work continues into the post-inscription period, a Nature Center capital campaign, and the organization’s 80th anniversary.
Takeaway
The Okefenokee proves the thesis behind everything we do: if people love a place, protecting it becomes the natural next step. The guest experience and the conservation mission were never in tension. The trick was telling them as one story across multiple channels.
The Okefenokee Swamp is ready for the world to come discover it.
Our Role
Rickel Jones Creative served as content strategist, brand and channel lead, and social media management partner: defining the dual-brand voice, aligning content strategy to the organizations’ interpretive plan, giving each channel a clear role, and preparing the digital presence for a world-stage moment.
Credits
Creative Director & Strategy Lead: Aaron Rickel Jones
Executive Director, Okefenokee Swamp Park, Inc.: Kim Bednarek
Photography: Lauren Yoho
Video Production: Aaron Rickel Jones