As you may know, Tourism Tofino does not typically run an advertising campaign to attract summer visitation. However, given the significant business interruption caused by the unexpected closure of Highway 4 at Cameron Bluffs for nearly three weeks, Tourism Tofino recently ran a summer recovery campaign to re-attract lost summer visitation with the main message that “Tofino is open”. We also collaborated with Tourism Ucluelet to display the message that the highway is open on our three digital billboard screens on Highway 19 northbound, by the Snaw-naw-as Shell service station.
The recovery campaign was launched upon the re-opening of the highway on June 26, and wrapped up by July 16. Audiences saw this on three platforms:
- A 10-second closed-captioning message on broadcast channels Global BC & AB during prime-time news and programming. Watch the message here.
- Sponsored posts on Instagram and Facebook, targeted to people who have either a) visited tourismtofino.com recently and/or b) have shown interest in travel, outdoor recreation, and others. Here is the image used:
3. Ads that targeted confirmed travellers to Tofino, using anonymous online travel search and booking behaviour data.
These three digital billboards rotated for 6 seconds at a time, from June 28 to July 10, on Highway 19 northbound:
Two of the three communicated the re-opening of Highway 4:
.while the third billboard shared responsible tourism messaging:
