Air Canada Launches "Test Drive Canada"

02/06/2016 11:35

Digital campaign invites Americans to visit Canada through online advertising and social media

MONTREAL, June 2, 2016 /CNW Telbec/ - Air Canada has launched a new digital advertising campaign in the United States called Test Drive Canada, inviting U.S. residents to visit Canada. The regular U.S. election-period surge in search engine queries about 'moving to Canada' and social media conversations has led Canada's national carrier to create a digital campaign using humour to increase awareness of Air Canada's market presence in the United States.

"Just as with past U.S. election campaigns, every four years we see the phenomenon of Americans musing about moving to Canada," said Selma Filali Director, Global Marketing and Sales Communications at Air Canada. "This time, we thought we would have a little fun in a tongue-in-cheek, creative way using typically understated Canadian humour. We're basically saying to our neighbours to the south, we'd love to have you over and take a look around; come have a great time with all that Canada has to offer. Of course, we want everyone to get along, so if you buy a return ticket – all the better."

The digital campaign is targeted to residents of Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Boston, and Washington, D.C., and provides light-hearted travel tips and sight-seeing advice for Canadian cities, along with information on Air Canada's flight schedule serving their city. Air Canada has the largest presence of any international carrier in the United States, with over 240 daily non-stop flights from 55 U.S. cities to six Canadian cities: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa and Halifax.

"With increased attention on Canada from our friends south of the border, Air Canada had a unique opportunity to catch their attention and give them a chance to 'test drive' the country," said Ryan Spelliscy, Chief Creative Officer, J. Walter Thompson Canada. "This tongue-in-cheek campaign really showcased the teams nimble approach to keeping the brand relevant and top of mind."

As part of the campaign's digital strategy, Air Canada will be monitoring social media conversations and responding to U.S. residents with personalized messages and targeted videos.

Targeted YouTube Pre-Roll will be promoted in each of the five target U.S. markets, delivering video messaging with contextual and geographical filters across multiple screens (desktop, mobile, tablet). Twitter Promoted Video and Promoted Tweets will leverage social aggregators to capture Tweets mentioning 'moving to Canada' and showcase the user generated content (UGC) across digital and social platforms. This will include interactive polling, which will allow U.S. residents to Retweet a video showing a Canadian city similar to their own.

The campaign videos can be viewed on Air Canada's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfE-mzFcEck Follow the conversation on Twitter with #TestDriveCanada.

The Test Drive Canada campaign is led by Air Canada's creative agency J. Walter Thompson Canada, media by Mindshare, and public relations by Spafax Content Marketing Americas.

About Air Canada

Air Canada is Canada's largest domestic and international airline serving more than 200 airports on six continents. Canada's flag carrier is among the 20 largest airlines in the world and in 2015 served more than 41 million customers. Air Canada provides scheduled passenger service directly to 64 airports in Canada, 55 in the United States and 87 in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Australia, the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America and South America. Air Canada is a founding member of Star Alliance, the world's most comprehensive air transportation network serving 1,330 airports in 192 countries. Air Canada is the only international network carrier in North America to receive a Four-Star ranking according to independent U.K. research firm Skytrax. For more information, please visit: www.aircanada.com, follow @AirCanada on Twitter and join Air Canada on Facebook.