Painting the town red

(and blue and green and yellow and orange)

At first glance, it’s a dancing array of party balloons. Look again and it’s a conga line of air bubbles, trailing playfully above and behind a scuba diver. Blink, and it’s the telltale effervescence of high quality champagne.

You may never decide exactly what it’s supposed to represent, but if you catch on to the fact that it signifies fun, then the new brand and marketing campaign just launched by Destination St. John’s has done its job.

Cathy Duke is CEO of Destination St. John’s, the organization responsible for marketing the greater metro area’s tourism, meeting and convention products. “It’s a very competitive market out there,” she said, “and we needed to break through all the noise and the sea of sameness. What DSJ needed was a fresh new campaign that would be consistent with the province’s campaign but, at the same time, would reflect who we are as an urban destination and would allow us to stand out in the crowd.”

The task of fulfilling that goal fell to The Idea Factory, a marketing and advertising firm based in (where else?) St. John’s. The firm conducted an intensive brand audit, conducting interviews and focus groups with meeting planners and tourism leaders, asking them to define the St. John’s experience.

What they found was that people tended to reference the “unexpected good” when they described the region: the person who, when asked for directions, walks the visitor to their destination; the friendships made over lunch in one of the city’s many pubs; the stories that f lowed from shopkeepers and taxi drivers.

Another theme that surfaced was “colourful”, as in colourful characters and colourful scenery. Which explains why the common theme throughout the new brand is colour – and lots of it, presented in all its primary glory.

Still, with most hotels in the city operating at close-to-capacity and restaurants struggling to keep up with reservations, why did Destination St. John’s feel it was necessary to invest in a brand and marketing campaign?

Duke explained that most meeting and convention organizers plan four to five years in advance. “The expansion to the St. John’s Convention Center will be completed in 2016, so we’ll see available meeting space double. And there are a handful of hotels under consideration, which means we’ll see several new hotels being constructed in the next few years. It is important for us to make a significant impact now, so that the market is there when that extra capacity becomes available.”

The brand and marketing materials (which include a destination planner, visitor’s guide, web site, mobile app and trade show booth) cost approximately $150,000 to develop. Duke adds there will be incremental costs each year, but she expects those expenses to be managed within the organization’s regular marketing budget. “The campaign will remain fresh as collateral materials are managed and manipulated electronically and as DSJ’s social media platform utilizes new images, video clips and stories of our partners and our destination.”