Targeting Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Boston, and DC, #TestDriveCanada offers travel tips around six Canadian cities.
Air Canada has launched a digital advertising campaign called #TestDriveCanada, inviting American residents to visit Canada. The regular U.S. election period surge in search engine queries about ‘moving to Canada’ and social media conversations have led the carrier to devise said marketing strategy.
Using humour, the aim of the push is to increase awareness over the aviation giant’s presence in the United States. Targeting the residents of Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Boston, and Washington, DC, the online effort provides travel tips and sight-seeing advice around Canadian cities.
Said initiative also offers scheduling information for flights serving the respective cities. The airline has the largest presence of any international carrier in the United States, with more than 240 non-stop flights daily from 55 American cities to Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, and Halifax in Canada.
Air Canada will monitor social media conversations and respond to keen audiences with personalised messages and targeted videos. YouTube content is to be promoted in five target markets, delivering messaging with contextual and geographical filters across multiple screens to include the desktop, mobile, and tablet.
A Twitter component has been introduced to leverage social aggregators—to capture tweets mentioning ‘moving to Canada’ and showcase the user-generated content across digital and social platforms. The aforementioned includes interactive polling, allowing Americans to retweet a video of a Canadian city similar to their own.
The spots are available via YouTube. Additionally, viewers can follow the campaign’s trail on Twitter using the hashtag #TestDriveCanada. The creative exercise is led by agency-of-record, JWT Canada, with media buying and planning handled by Mindshare and public relations by Spafax.
“We thought we’d have a little fun using typically understated Canadian humour. We’re basically saying to our neighbours to the south, we’d love to have you over; come have a great time with all that Canada has to offer,” said Selma Filali Director, Global Marketing and Sales Communications at Air Canada.
