To celebrate Canada Day, Tilley Endurables’ headed to Tilley, Alberta for a hat giveaway.
The “Hats off to Tilley” campaign saw every person 18+ in town receive a customized red-and-white Tilley hat from company founder Alex Tilley.
The Tilley Alberta Hat
Around 350 hats, which retail at about $85 each, were given away to residents on June 28.
“Our customers are a crazy bunch. They would stop on the Trans-Canada Highway and take their picture beside the sign for this town called Tilley in the middle of Alberta and send it to us,” said David Kappale, vice-president of sales at Toronto-based Tilley Endurables. “Over the years, we received lots of these pictures and I thought we really should do something to play off Tilley and Tilley.”
A public relations campaign, developed by Calgary-based Strut Creative for the event, included a media tour, pre-event and day-of interviews with Alex Tilley and social media. The story received coverage on major television stations including CTV, Global and CBC, as well as local newspaper coverage.
“The [media relations] strategy was to profile the uniqueness of the event and the fact that this iconic high-profile business person, Alex Tilley, was coming to small-town Alberta to celebrate Canada in such a generous way,” said Bonnie Elgie, communications and public relations strategist at Strut.
“In addition to the event, it was also an opportunity to remind Canadians, or perhaps tell them for the first time, that Tilley Endurables is a very successful Canadian company and they’re very proud to manufacture their products in Canada. So there was a business angle as well as the more feel-good angle to the event.”
As part of the event, Alex Tilley led the Tilley Heritage Day Parade as grand marshall.
“[The giveaway] was just a fun thing to do,” said Kappale. “We’re fortunate enough to be in the position where we get to do some fun things, so why not?”
