Download Nomination Page for EDAC Advertising Campaign of the Year

Nomination Page for EDAC Advertising Campaign of the Year Awards
The Town of Sundre department of economic development manages tourism development and
marketing for the community of Sundre, Alberta – population approximately 3,000. The Explore
Sundre campaign began in 2015 as a multi-media campaign conducted entirely in-house. One of our
biggest challenges was managing this campaign with a staff of one. In 2016, the campaign expanded
to 7 private partners (including a B&B; a hotel and golf course; a RV and leisure resort; a rafting
company; a backcountry trail riding company; a BBQ deli; and our local Pioneer Village Museum),
and is spending just over $60,000 for the second year in a row thanks to contributions by our
partners and a Travel Alberta Cooperative Marketing grant. The Town of Sundre brought together
these partners who acted in solidarity to promote the community’s new in-house built destination
website, www.exploresundre.ca, as a single call-to-action.
The ExploreSundre.ca Marketing Campaign is Founded on Market Research and Analysis
Utilizing information collected on visitors from our local Visitor Information Centre (VIC), we were
able to estimate our primary audience’s demographic profile. We also utilized information provided
by our private cooperative advertising partners. When the campaign began in 2015, we used this
information to conduct a multi-media marketing campaign that would reach our audience. And to
gauge the success of the campaign, we tracked as much information as possible and set targets for
each participating partner. Targets included revenue increases; sales numbers; event attendee
increases; VIC visitor increases; website visits; etc. (Our table section of our 2015 post-campaign
report is attached to this application; you’ll note that we were almost entirely successful except for
one or two challenging areas.)
We coupled this tracking by using web analytics, and finally with an online survey embedded into our
in-house built website, www.exploresundre.ca. Those who completed the survey were automatically
entered into a draw to win a rafting adventure for 4 with one of our partners. We were thus able to
determine which advertising means were effective, and to further refine our demographic audience
profile and – most importantly – their associated interests.
We found that our 2015 assumptions were mostly correct – that our target audience is a woman of
about 35 years old, a working professional of some sort, probably with children, and with an interest
in the outdoors. Our results via Facebook, Analytics, and our Survey all skew toward this. Changes
we made in 2016 included adding a little more emphasis on the ‘wonder’ of our nearby wild horses.
The Explore Sundre campaign utilized an innovative, unique approach in our creative
materials to encourage travellers to visit our destination
The Explore Sundre promotional campaign utilized a multi-media approach to reach our audience,
involving print, broadcast (radio and TV), billboard posters, trade shows, social media and digital
content marketing. It is one of the largest and most ambitious campaigns that a community of our
small size has ever undertaken, that we know of anywhere.
Some of the creative ways in which both our 2015 and 2016 campaigns reached our audience include
the following (not an exhaustive list):
a)
Calgary Airport baggage section pillar posters coupled with unique brochures at
Tourism Calgary booth.
b)
Avenue Magazine summer calendar
c)
Global Morning News 15 sec news tag/ad
d)
In-house website with survey contest
e)
Curated Content (blogs)