Bay-cation – Envision Saint John Advertising Campaign

Why just vacation when you can bay-cation instead?

Envision Saint John: The Regional Growth Agency is responsible for attracting investment, business, people, and visitors to the Saint John Region. The agency represents seven municipalities including the City of Saint John – a major port city – and the outlying residential neighbourhoods and naturehoods all surrounded by beautiful waterways including the world-famous Bay of Fundy. Using our inclusive destination marketing brand – Saint John and the Towns by the Bay — our goal is to encourage visitation throughout the Saint John Region.

Recognizing that we are competing on a global stage for visitors’ dollars, it was imperative that we lean into our key point of differentiation – the only city on the Bay of Fundy.

We developed a new set of brand guidelines, which formally defined our key communication pillars and communities, as well as our brand promise – Best of the Bay, our brand experience – An Invigorating Getaway and our brand persona – The Storied Adventurer.

Using these guidelines as inspiration, the concept of Bay-cation was born – “Why just vacation when you can bay-cation instead?” Many have heard of the Bay of Fundy, but few have heard of the concept of a “bay-cation,” something that had already been a subtle part of our campaign language for the past few years. It was a simple and descriptive way to make us stand out from the crowd.

The campaign was built with two objectives, primarily focusing on awareness of the destination, with a secondary focus on consideration/retargeting. It launched in early April 2024, a month earlier than pervious campaigns, and will be in market until mid-September, running three different flights of content, to avoid fatigue, targeting the Maritimes, select Ontario communities and New England, USA. In alignment with the province of New Brunswick, this campaign targeted Outdoorsy Suburban Families and Young Urban Cultural Enthusiast visitor profiles, in these markets, those who, as determined by research, have the highest propensity for visiting our region.

As the campaign is still in market, results are not available at this time, however we do know that it has been received extremely well by regional operators, who have reached out and asked for ways that they can leverage the campaign locally and within their own marketing efforts.

We developed a Bay-cation Toolkit for operators, including various campaign elements like giphys, images, and key messages, as well as reminders of tools available to them, including their listing on our website, images, social media handles and more. We also launched a “Backyard Bay-cation” contest, a grass-roots initiative where we attended regional events, asking locals trivia about the region, and rewarding those who answered correctly with local experiences, encouraging them to “bay-cation” right here in their own backyard.

Campaign Videos: https://platform.crowdriff.com/m/s-NxtYgSdiB77nLxDr