Insight
Over six million European travellers are considering Canada as a future holiday destination. Destination Canada needed to motivate those travellers to change the way they think about Canada, from a ‘might visit at some point’ destination, to placing it right at the top of their ‘go there next’ list.
Research shows that consumers are increasingly turning away from traditional media, and towards more personalised, trusted sources, including friends and family or key influencers, to research and plan their travel.
Traditional marketing campaigns with sponsored banners or branded social posts are no longer enough to convince consumers to buy a high-ticket item like an international holiday. OMD would have to reach and entice them in a more authentic way, using more novel, innovative marketing ideas to engage them emotionally, help them visualise the experience and make them really LOVE the idea of visiting Canada.
It would need to reach them at key points along their decision-making journey and within the right environments, to influence their path to purchase. It would have to really connect with their specific interests and passions, showing them in a much more sensory and visually rich way, why Canada is a ‘must-see’ destination.
Based on this, the core of the marketing focus would need to be content – rich environments like videos, photos and articles – to help bring Canada to life and allow potential travellers to visualise themselves there.
Strategy
The ‘Explore Canada’ campaign focused on generating and seeding truly authentic, rich and interesting content, to bring the sights, wonders and experience of Canada to life.
Rather than a traditional branded campaign, it wanted viewers to come into contact with the content naturally, through people and environments they know and trust.
It would then tap into this interest at the right time – and help move viewers towards the moment of decision – booking a trip to Canada.
Over 500 pieces of high quality content were developed across passion points and locations in Canada. Because authenticity was integral to this strategy, it had NO branding on any of this content.
For the video content, the agency identified several high profile but not celebrity YouTubers in each market who have a real connection with their interest group-based audience, based on high quality social posts in their personal areas of expertise – food, photography, wildlife, adventure-seeking and more.
It then co-created uniquely personal, authentic videos with each influencer on location in Canada. Adopting each influencer’s typical filming style, our videos were designed to fit in to their portfolio, while showing off the beauty and majesty of Canada as the perfect setting.
Influencers simply shared and promoted the content directly with their YouTube followers, allowing the material to seed organically. Many also promoted their Canada videos on their Facebook and Instagram accounts.
The agency also hosted content natively in environments that potential travellers frequent, like Facebook, Instagram, or within sites like The Guardian, to reach consumers with rich Canada content as they navigate naturally online.
Only when consumers had viewed several pieces of un-branded content, which meant it now considered them as pre-qualified or potentially ready to buy, would serve them more traditional offer-based messages from third party tourism partners. These featured travel offers specifically related to the content the users had seen.
Execution
Authenticity was central to this campaign, ensuring content was viewed in natural environments and from trusted sources vs. blatant advertising.
The influencers were selected not for their audience demographics, but based on the quality of their posts, and the way they convey their personal passions. Their videos were developed in the influencer’s usual filmed style, so they looked and felt familiar.
Video content included a UK chef and vlogger visiting Canada’s best seafood restaurant in Newfoundland, a German fashion influencer’s visit to Toronto’s catwalks, a French adventure-seeker’s wildlife experience in Vancouver and more. End cards following the videos invited viewers to see more content shot on location in Canada.
A host of unbranded content was seeded programmatically using native and social advertising to target travellers at scale. It continued to maintain the ‘authentic’ feel of the content across multiple settings, with no overt sales messaging.
Content was housed natively (e.g. The Guardian, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram) as well as on a dedicated content hub where users could browse videos, articles and photo galleries. Simply put, the agency wanted to make it easy for potential travellers to consume content about Canada in any online environment.
Finally, once viewers had engaged with multiple pieces of unbranded content, the agency seeded a more ‘traditional’ paid media message, suggesting it connect them with a local tourism partner office to offer them a great deal on the location or experience they’d viewed.
Everything shared used simple, friendly and personalised messaging – and was never overtly salesy or pushy.
Results
The campaign inspired people with exciting content:
• Over 205,000 viewing hours
• Over 30 million video views, of which, over 6 million were organic
• Over 50 million views of Facebook content with over 1 million clicks
• Doubled Instagram audience, from 250,000 to over 500,000 followers
• Over 520,000 visits to the content hub, including 30% return visitors.
The campaign successfully drove travellers to Canada:
• Over $300 million tourism revenue generated from marketed countries (67:1 ROI)
- Over 190,000 content viewers booked a Canada trip
- A further 39,300 travellers converted via our trade partners
• Interest and consideration for Canada holidays has increased in all marketed countries
- In Germany, awareness of Canada vs. other destinations went from 8th to 4th place, and ‘Kanada’ searches were at their highest in six years (since the 2010 winter Olympics).
The use of authentic influencer videos to showcase Canada has had impact that continues to grow organically, even after the campaign’s end. It continues to see 1-2,000 organic views of the videos each week.
The influencers were positively impacted by their trips to Canada and many continue to post additional photos and memories about Canada on Facebook and Instagram, well after the initial videos were seeded.