Open and Ready: One Year Helene Milestone + Fall Toolkit
We’re excited to share marketing assets for Open & Ready—a messaging campaign marking one year since Hurricane Helene and celebrating the Asheville area’s resilience.
A year after the storm, our community stands strong, welcoming visitors to experience the progress, spirit, and creativity that define this place. The journey has looked different for everyone, but each step forward has brought us here—into one of the longest and most vibrant fall seasons in the country. Now, we invite guests to be part of what’s next: to witness the beauty, support local businesses, and feel the energy of the Asheville area in full color.
Campaign Overview
Campaign Name: Open and Ready
Season: Fall 2025
Purpose: Highlight the Asheville area’s one-year milestone since Hurricane Helene while showcasing the region’s resilience, creativity, and one of the longest, most colorful fall seasons in the country.
Why it matters: Connect your business to a regional effort that celebrates community progress, inspires visitation, and positions the Asheville area as a must-experience fall destination.
Partner Benefits:
- Increased visibility via @VisitAsheville and campaign amplification
- Simple, ready-to-use marketing content
- Opportunity to tie your business story to both the fall season and the region’s one-year milestone of resilience
Social Media Assets
Social Carousels (Instagram/Facebook)
Carousel A: General Campaign | TEMPLATE LINK
- Slide 1: Asheville is Open and Ready
- Slide 2: Ready for Crisp Mountain Air & Brilliant Autumn Views (Customize with your own photo)
- Slide 3: Ready for Season Seekers & Story Makers (Customize with your own photo)
- Slide 4: Open & Ready Logo
Carousel B: Business-Specific | TEMPLATE LINK
- Slide 1: Open and Ready for Fall
- Slide 2: Photo of your space dressed in autumn or showcasing a seasonal offering
- Slide 3: Highlight a fall menu item, event, product, or your one-year milestone story
- Slide 4: Open & Ready logo
Carousel C: Mark the Milestone | TEMPLATE LINK
Showcase your business’s resilience one year after Helene with a Then/Now social media carousel.
- Slide 1: One Year Strong / This is What One Year of Progress Looks Like
- Slide 2: Then – Add a photo from the days or weeks after Helene, with a date.
- Slide 3: Now – Show your business today, thriving in fall 2025, with a date.
- Slide 4: Open & Ready campaign logo
Carousel D: Share Progress Stats | TEMPLATE LINK
Use this social carousel template of Progress Stats to share one-year recovery milestones.
- Slide 1: In the year since Helene …
- Slide 3: 350+ miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway are open. Take Asheville to favorites like Graveyard Fields, Mount Pisgah, and Devil’s Courthouse.
- Slide 4: 380+ artists are showing their work in the River Arts District.
- Slide 5: Hundreds of miles of trails in Asheville and surrounding areas are open for hiking, biking, and exploring.
- Slide 6: Iconic fall attractions like Biltmore, the North Carolina Arboretum, and regional farms and orchards are welcoming visitors.
- Slide 7: Asheville’s events calendar is thriving with 600+ festivals, live music, and seasonal celebrations.
- Slide 8: Open & Ready campaign logo
More Resources
Keep sharing Asheville’s stories with these ready-to-use resources:
- One-Year Hurricane Helene Milestone – Page collating videos, updates, events and more highlighting progress across Western North Carolina.
- Fall Color Forecast: What’s New This Season – A quick look at what’s fresh and unique for fall 2025.
- Weekly Fall Color Reports – Help visitors stay updated with the latest foliage conditions from our Fall Color Hunters.
- Top Fall Festivals & Events – A round-up of can’t-miss seasonal happenings coming up this fall.
- Thomas Dambo’s Trolls: A Field Study – Announces the U.S. premiere of Thomas Dambo’s whimsical outdoor troll sculptures at The North Carolina Arboretum, inviting visitors to explore and interact with this playful winter art experience.
- Historic Asheville Sessions – Celebrates Asheville’s role in shaping American roots music, highlighting the 1925 recording sessions and a citywide centennial celebration happening Nov 6-9, 2025.
- Asheville, One Year After Helene Press Release – Highlights community resilience, recovery progress, and the stories of local businesses and attractions one year after the storm.
Helene Milestone Videos
We’ve created a series of milestone videos marking one year since Hurricane Helene, spotlighting resilience and progress across the Asheville area. These are designed to be easy for you to share and showcase in your own storytelling.
What’s available:
- 5 full-length, landscape orientation videos (one each on Outdoors, Foodtopia, Arts & Music, Black Mountain & Swannanoa, plus an overall Asheville video that combines all sectors).
- 10 shorter cutdown videos perfect for quick engagement on social.
How to share:
- Share the full-length horizontal videos directly from our YouTube channel by sharing the link or embedding them on your site. ACCESS THEM HERE >>
- The cutdown videos can either be reshared from our social channels (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok) or downloaded to post natively on your own channels.
ACCESS THEM HERE >>
These videos are a powerful way to highlight Asheville’s progress and invite your audiences to be part of the region’s next chapter.
Sharing Tips: Join the Collective Effort
The more consistently we all share, the stronger the message becomes. Here are a few easy ways to join in:
- Pick one story a week – Whether it’s a video, article, or photo, commit to posting at least once per week on your social channels.
- Use the visuals provided – Download images and videos from the Media Center to make your posts eye-catching and ready-to-go.
- Tag and hashtag – Tag @exploreasheville and use #ExploreAsheville so your posts connect with the larger conversation.
- Mix it up – Rotate between outdoors, food, arts, and events to showcase the full spectrum of Asheville’s story.
- Keep it personal – Add your voice. A short reflection, a staff favorite, or a “why this matters” goes a long way.
📣 Challenge: We’re asking every partner to share at least one piece of content per week from this toolkit. Together, these small actions build a big collective impact.