BCBusiness

106 BCBusiness jULY/AUGUST 2018 W hen the province's tourism marketer unveiled a revamp of its long- running promotional campaign in 2014, the latest incarnation of the storied Super, Natural British Columbia brand faced high expectations. "It wasn't so much a reinvention as a reinvigoration," says Marsha Walden, president and CEO of Destination BC. Created by Vancouver agency Camp Paciˆc, today's campaign aims to capture the ‰avour of B.C.'s natural and built environment, Walden explains. "Globally, travel to cities is strengthening relative to rural areas, so we want to make sure that we're still connecting our city experience to our wilderness experience," she says. "So that's where it started: just trying to re- embed a layer of strong emotion around what that looks like for the western edge of Canada and then connect people to that emotionally." Destination BC, which receives a $51-million annual budget from the provincial government, recently relaunched its consumer-facing HelloBC website to let potential visitors from around the world custom- ize their experience. But more than half the people who plan travel begin with a Google search, and they'll probably look at some 40 sites before making a decision, Walden stresses. "So rather than focusing all our ener"y on our website, we focus our ener"y on our web presence," she says. "Regardless of where people are looking, they will ˆnd elements of British Columbia as part of our promotional strate"y." For an outside perspective, we turned to Noel O'Dea, president of Target Marketing and Communications, agency of record for Newfound- land and Labrador Tourism since 2005. O'Dea, whose St. John's–based ˆrm has won roughly 300 regional, national and international awards for its brand and tourism campaigns showcasing his home province, notes that he doesn't know B.C.'s target audience or how eœective its current branding eœort has been. "I'm not being critical," he says. "These are just my observations in looking at it for the ˆrst time." About 25 years ago, O'Dea says, he ˆrst saw the Super, Natural British Columbia ad showing three killer whales surfacing against a mountain backdrop. The tagline: "So many of our visitors return in Spring." "That was a highly memorable and relevant ad to me," recalls O'Dea, who is also Target's director of strategic and creative planning. "And it remains mem- orable because it has such simplicity and strength, and it has an easy-to-understand brand personality and attitude. The words haven't changed—Super, Natural British Columbia—but the brand personality is much more di¡cult to decipher." O'Dea praises the current campaign's photogra- phy. "And the art direction is very tasty, and it is excep- tionally good work." But for him, there's something missing. "What I ˆnd as an outsider is that it's kind of self-conscious and reverent in its sophistication," O'Dea says. "It lacks a personality, and it lacks a cer- tain kind of humanity and emotion." Asked what the marketplace thinks, Walden says that Destination BC does baseline and ongoing track- ing research around criteria such as travel intentions and what she calls the brand's emotional and func- tional resonance. "Our awareness levels are very strong," she adds. "When we look at our Net Promoter Score, compared to our key competitors we remain No. 1 or 2 in most key North American markets." As media channels have changed, so has the way that people around the world connect with content, Walden says. "We ˆnd, for instance, in very real-time, real-world testing, that wildlife, not surprisingly, has an enormous draw," she explains. "And so we use that as a bit of a hook to get people into the broader story of British Columbia." Veteran creative director Alvin Wasserman was part of the second and longest-running team to handle B R A N D I N G show and Tell Two advertising pros weigh in on B.C.'s latest eorts to sell itself to the world "Globally, travel to cities is strengthening relative to rural areas, so we want to make sure that we're still connecting our city experience to our wilderness experience" —Marsha Walden, president and CEO, Destination BC

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