Brand Canada deploys offbeat media

Canada is looking for some company and is inviting the rest of the world to drop by for a visit. The Canadian Tourism Commission's (CTC) Brand Canada ad campaign, complete with tag line 'Canada. Keep exploring,' was unveiled in London, England yesterday. The mandate? To get on potential visitors' radars through innovative media placement.

'We want to get the message across in the course of their daily lives,' explains Steve Wright, strategic planner at DDB Canada, the agency behind the campaign. 'We want to get on people's shopping lists.'

As such, bagel and bread bags, coffee sleeves, branded smart cars and, oh yes, even instructional diagrams on health clubs' weight machines will be sporting the Brand Canada maple leaf in various European markets such as the U.K., France and Germany. Other campaign executions include superboards, public bus wraps and 3-D posters (depicting a stroll through Old Quebec City for example). All this in addition to traditional radio and print buys.

'There's no point in our providing ad number 22 in a block of 85 ads within a travel magazine. The point is to get outside of traditional travel media,' says Wright.

By Pia Musngi
November 15, 2005

Canada is looking for some company and is inviting the rest of the world to drop by for a visit. The Canadian Tourism Commission’s (CTC) Brand Canada ad campaign, complete with tag line ‘Canada. Keep exploring,’ was unveiled in London, England yesterday. The mandate? To get on potential visitors’ radars through innovative media placement.

‘We want to get the message across in the course of their daily lives,’ explains Steve Wright, strategic planner at DDB Canada, the agency behind the campaign. ‘We want to get on people’s shopping lists.’

As such, bagel and bread bags, coffee sleeves, branded smart cars and, oh yes, even instructional diagrams on health clubs’ weight machines will be sporting the Brand Canada maple leaf in various European markets such as the U.K., France and Germany. Other campaign executions include superboards, public bus wraps and 3-D posters (depicting a stroll through Old Quebec City for example). All this in addition to traditional radio and print buys.

‘There’s no point in our providing ad number 22 in a block of 85 ads within a travel magazine. The point is to get outside of traditional travel media,’ says Wright.

Wright says that the Canadian domestic travel push — launching in spring 2006 to capture the summer holiday rush — will consist of a media partnership between Rogers, Alliance Atlantis and SRC. Travel vignettes will be produced to run in print, on TV and online, and will be integrated into programming across all partner properties. Also launching in the spring is an online self-exam tool called Explorer Quotient where users answer travel scenarios that will reveal an individual’s explorer type. Once determined, the tool suggests various travel scenarios.

Wright says: ‘We want to intrigue people into exploration, to engage them in a longer conversation. It’s much more personal.’ He adds that the CTC has plans to measure the campaign’s success and impact on Canuck tourism after the first wave. The campaign is aimed at the higher-end traveler, aged 35-50, who ‘tend to stay longer and spend more.’ Media buys were handled by OMD Worldwide.