Tourism minister says momentum building heading into summer
- Tourism Minister Terry French. Telegram file photo
By Ashley Fitzpatrick, The Telegram
We’ve become pretty good at talking ourselves up. The province of Newfoundland and Labrador has received accolades for its tourism promotions in recent years, from marketing professionals around the world. The latest provincial television ads started running Jan. 17.
How well we are able to promote ourselves is connected to the amount of money put into marketing.
“I mean, we’ve doubled the marketing budget from $6 million (2003) to $13 million (2009-2010), and we certainly compare very, very well with the rest of our Atlantic provinces,” said Tourism Minister Terry French.
The tourism budget for 2011 was not pinned down when he spoke to The Telegram, but French said he expected continued support for the marketing program this year.
“I think we’re headed in the right direction. You can never pre-judge what the budget is going to do, but I can tell you that the current premier and all of caucus and cabinet certainly believe that the things we’re doing in tourism — it’s certainly a bright spot as we see it in Newfoundland and Labrador,” he said.
The amount of money spent on promotion is only one concern, French said. There is also the quality of what is being produced.
Much of the province’s marketing work is completed in-house, but in creating the well-received television ads, the Tourism Department has teamed with St. John’s-based Target Marketing.
“They bring an awful lot to the table for us. They’re award-winning people and a great company, people we’ve spent a lot of time with,” French said.
He said the combination of work by his department and, since 2005, the creative contribution of Target Marketing, amount to a “one-two punch” that has led to increased attention being paid to promotions.
Creative content
Newfoundland and Labrador’s tourism ads focus on people and place. Online and print ads include vibrant, high-colour photos — a breaching whale, Inukshuks, snow-capped mountains in Gros Morne and a saltbox village at dusk.
Television and radio ads have used everything from the province’s unusual place names to the fact that Newfoundland has its own time zone as jumping-off points. Visuals include everything from sweeping aerial shots of the Torngat Mountains to quick pans of children playing in downtown St. John’s.
Creative designs, such as print ads shaped like boarding passes, are meant to catch eyes.
Some ads have also been targeted to specific interests. For example, a print advertisement that includes a photo of a hunter, geared-up for an outing in the woods, reads: “Yesterday 120,000 moose hated John. Today, 119,999 moose really hate John.” Used in select publications, it targets hunters and fishermen who might take advantage of the services of provincial outfitters.
One of the earliest joint projects by Target Marketing and the province was a billboard, set along the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto.
“In a world of digital printing, we had an artist hanging 60-feet in the air … hand-painting a scenic window into Newfoundland and Labrador. Not only did the painting reveal our fresh air, beautiful scenery and creativity, but it told a story too,” states the Target Marketing website (www.targetmarketing.ca).
The site hosts a video of the project being completed.
Other advertising campaigns — like the “For the Love of NL” mail-outs — have targeted tourism at home, offering so-called “stay-cations.”
Promotions with a plan
“We want to show our quaintness and our beauty, but we also needed to show that we have the ability to host a big show,” French said.
“Of course, we did that with the Junos, but we want to continue to do that as well.”
Aside from the number and content of ads, he said, placement is key.
“One of the things that we’ve done is marketed strategically, and it’s so important for a small place like Newfoundland and Labrador,” the minister said.
“I mean, the reality of it is, we’ve got to make a bang for our buck. So we’ll continue to market nationally — places like Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, and we’ll do our strategic buys of Eastern U.S. and U.K. and we’ll keep moving on, but our marketing strategy so far has worked very, very well.”
When asked where our ads might be popping up this year, French said other parts of Canada will be a target. The Canadian Tourism Commission has forecast that more Canadians will be out travelling within the country this year, meaning a larger pool of potential visitors.
“So, right off the bat, that would be a place that we would continue to advertise and perhaps do more to advertise than we had in previous years,” he said.
His department is now in the early stages of planning the province’s marketing strategy for the next several years. It will decide on new areas to highlight and new places to focus advertisements.
“There’s a lot of areas that have a lot of potential,” French said.
Horizons 2011 