THUNDER BAY — As curling fans across the tuned in to watch the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, they also saw an ad campaign promoting the city — and that meant a lot of exposure.
“I think the estimates are in the millions, the tens of millions," Jamie Taylor, CEO of Thunder Bay's Community Economic Development Commission (CEDC), which ran the campaign.
"In terms of the earned media value that we did just from having that small airtime in terms of the commercials," she continued. "They're being seen all over the place, and I don't know about you, but I've received a lot of comments about the commercials over the last 10 days, so it's definitely something that we're all proud of."
Taylor said airtime for some of the CEDC’s commercials came free of charge as part of the bid for hosting the event. There were also opportunities to get a discount rate on paid advertising.
A similar commercial can be seen on the CEDC's youtube page.
Coun. Michael Zussino asked whether the CEDC was going to capitalize on more events that would gain as much attention as the Scotties.
“We meet with a number of different groups. So obviously, the Scotties are not something that we could execute every year, but there are a number of ways that we can promote the city for different and the great thing is that we do have the tourism development fund that can provide financial incentives to bring more events here. So that really is the catalyst to us being able to attract those events,” said Taylor.
“The tourism team works tirelessly at attending different Conferences where people are looking to identify locations. So whether or not that's conventions or sports, there are different avenues where you can go and have those discussions and pitch your community. We are doing that.
Taylor and the CEDC's marketing and communications coordinator, Madeline Denhardt, attended council's Monday night meeting to present a report on their promotion efforts for 2024.
Over the last year, Denhardt said the CEDC's @thunderbaylifestyle platform on Instagram went from 2,000 followers to over 12,000 followers and, through organic and paid advertising, they reached over 12 million people.
The CEDC leads efforts to attract investments and support local business growth by promoting Thunder Bay as a destination for entrepreneurs, workforce talent, and industry.
Denhardt said the campaign showcased “day in the life” videos and photo content of nine newcomers joining the Thunder Bay community.
“Through this organic content, we've gained a lot of interest in Thunder Bay and a lot of positive narratives around Thunder Bay. Towards the end of the year, we actually developed a brand around this platform. Just giving it more credibility and allowing us to be comparable to other platforms or larger cities like Toronto or Calgary who are already doing this,” said Denhardt.
She noted the CEDC also had a paid market that focused on the forestry and bioeconomy and its new service and supply directory. Most of the paid market consisted of spotlight editorials in various business-related magazines, like Mining Life, and the Walleye.
In light of recent tariff threats from the United States, coun. Dominic Pasqualino asked the CEDC what they are preparing to do to combat any impact of the tariffs on Thunder Bay’s tourism sector and whether they planning to advertise Thunder Bay as a tourist destination alternative to the U.S.
Taylor said the CEDC is currently having internal discussions about the effects of tariffs on the community, but “in terms of business attraction as well as tourism, Paul Pepe and I will be back at council on March 17 to discuss specifically tourism.”
