Tourism campaign in this province shifting away from television

Tourism Saskatchewan’s five-year awareness campaign to change the visitor image of this province has been successful.

Jonathan Potts of the agency says the branding campaign in Alberta and Manitoba has changed attitudes.

Five years ago, people in these provinces thought of Saskatchewan as flat and boring, he told the 49x100 conference in Swift Current.

Now they describe this province with the words good, peace, relax and happy.

“Our brand is reputation. It’s not what we tell people that we see. It’s what people tell us we are. It’s not something you can create.”

The land and the sky and the experiences from them and the people here make up the brand.

The brand “is also what they say they don’t like about us” with the industry accentuating the likes and addressing the negatives.

Potts said the industry’s advertising methods are rapidly changing.

“In 2001 we got 55,000 to 65,000 requests for our printed guide. Last year we had 2,500 requests for print.” The 400-page guide has been discontinued in favour of a smaller more general guide. The agency is getting more and more requests from potential visitors for personalized itineraries of attractions and events.

“People do not use our guide like they used to.” However, he said printed regional or attraction guides are most relevant. “People will go out of their way to pick them up. A lot of content in them is more relevant than what we were producing.”

Tourism Saskatchewan’s advertising has shifted to consumer focus, digital first, always in and influence driven by figuring out what people are looking for, using online media, and using blogger or video content from online persons with a following that can be influenced. Online content has to be great to grab the viewer’s attention span of three or four seconds. Use is made of photos, videos and stories from people like Saskatchewan photographer Ryan Wunsch, whose spectacular photos tells a story.

Potts said the online focus is caused by shifts in viewer habits from cable TV to a fragmented audience.

Last year’s 12 per cent of people seeing the video campaign saw it on television while 23 per cent saw it only online.

Tourism Saskatchewan’s social media following across the world is over one million.

Ron Walter can be reached at ronjoy@sasktel.net