Canadian Tourism Commission

Most Canadian holidaymakers perceive their country as familiar ground, lacking the same excitement as foreign destinations. Taking a vacation in Canada meant staying at home, regardless of the actual distance travelled. And huge marketing efforts for international destinations were drawing them away. Case in point: in 2008, Canadian domestic travellers – the country’s largest tourism market – accounted for $59 billion of total tourism spending. But in the same year, Canadians took 27 million trips outside the country, causing a record domestic travel deficit of $12.6 billion.

To sell the Canadian stay-cation, the Vancouver-based Canadian Tourism Commission needed to inspire people to seek out new and exotic experiences in their own backyards. DDB thought the best people to convince them of the undiscovered world-class travel experiences at home would be other Canadians, because after all, “Locals Know.”

To get the conversation started, print ads ran from coast to coast featuring places in Canada that did not seem like Canada at all – sand dunes, a volcano, tropical-blue waters – accompanied by a question: where is this? On TV, nine 15-second spots used user-generated content: a man surfing river rapids, a zip-trekker rushing through the tree tops, a boat tour past a collapsing iceberg. All ads drove to Localsknow.ca or Secretdici.ca.

Besides revealing the locations from the TV and print ads (Saskatchewan, anyone?), the website invited visitors to share their local knowledge by adding their favourite unknown Canadian travel spots. People could share stories, leave comments and add new photos, which in turn created further buzz about the destinations themselves. A live Twitter feed also allowed visitors to follow the adventures of two fellow Canadians as they travelled across the country.

Before the campaign reached the halfway mark, Forbes magazine named “Locals Know” one of its top 10 travel campaigns in the world. The website has attracted over 450,000 visitors and generated over 2.2 million page views, blasting past industry averages. An interim conversion study conducted four weeks after launch revealed 22% of respondents claimed to have booked or already taken a trip in Canada since seeing the ads. Another 3% of Canadians said they would switch from a foreign trip to a Canadian destination instead.