Once seen as just a tea-and-tulips kind of place, British Columbia’s capital city has been shifting its image to that of a cocktail and culinary mecca thanks to a marketing strategy being honoured by the B.C chapter of the American Marketing Association (BCAMA).
The industry group has named Tourism Victoria as the province’s 2014 Marketer of the Year for transforming itself from relative obscurity to a major player on the international scene despite a tight budget and competition from top B.C. tourism destinations.
Trina Mousseau, chief marketing officer at Tourism Victoria, said when marketing on a budget, it’s all about creating memorable campaigns “worth talking about.”
“I think what we are really being recognized for is challenging old perceptions of Victoria as a destination,” Mousseau said.
“Victoria is such a vibrant place… We’ve got a cocktail scene, one of the top five hotel lobby bars on the world… We have a culinary scene that is booming because we are surrounded by farms. We describe it as very honest, all local stuff and you are up close with people who produce the food,” she said.
Mousseau said every strategy is designed to stand out. Tourism Victoria used video, quizzes and quirky hooks to grab peoples’ attention. For example, its “Victoria Calling” campaign (created in partnership with Eclipse Creative, Primal Communications, Innovate Imageworks, Inventa and GMR) placed phone booths in shopping centres in B.C., Alberta and Washington. Potential vacationers were enticed to engage in first-person perspective video tours of quintessential Victoria experiences and offered incentives to book a trip there and then.
Meanwhile, a “Meetings” campaign focused on bringing business travellers to the city by taking advantage of its many venues for conferences and meetings.
“Our campaigns are integrated, they are heavy on experiential, heavy online and digital and very heavy on social… But PR is our biggest driver,” Mousseau added.
The campaign’s results have been felt on the ground, Mousseau said, driving up hotel occupancy and increasing average nightly hotel revenue.
“We did third-party research, which studied our “Victoria Calling” campaign, it showed recall of the campaign was 52% higher than other campaigns.”
Steve Kim, chair of BCAMA’s Marketer of the Tear judging committee, said Tourism Victoria stood out because its creative yet strategic approach to sustainable tourism development allowed them to compete with some heavy hitting markets across the country.
“The judging committee was greatly impressed by their tenacity and groundbreaking results,” he said.
