Building Place Brand Champions

Website (including videos): www.GrowYourWorldRegina.com

Purpose

When Regina hosted the Grey Cup on November 20, 2022, Economic Development Regina (EDR) seized the opportunity to share its brand story locally and nationwide. The campaign spanned from November 16 to 30, 2022, with the goal of reinforcing the Place Brand narrative throughout the pre- and post-Grey Cup festivities and leading into Canadian Western Agribition.

Locally, a key objective was to build brand champions and equip businesses and residents with the brand narrative. Outside Regina, EDR wanted to start building awareness of Regina being a great place to live, visit, and invest – enticing people to check out the website, and to test brand messaging in multiple Canadian markets.

Total budget: $36,000

Effectiveness

Objective 1: Grow Stakeholder Engagement and Partnerships

Results:

The campaign featured permanent and temporary brand activations at strategic locations in the city, including the Regina Airport and Downtown Business District.
Four critical partner organizations (Regina Airport Authority, Regina Hotel Association, Tourism Regina, and Regina Downtown BID contributed to the campaign) with financial and in-kind contributions.

Objective 2: Grow Brand Awareness in Regina and Other Key Markets

Results:

The campaign generated positive conversations about Regina within and outside the city, which aligned with the goal of presenting a united place brand narrative.
While metrics like website visits, video views, digital ad performance, social media engagement, and earned media coverage were used to gauge effectiveness, the campaign’s most significant achievement was establishing proof of concept for a team approach to place marketing.

Key marketing metrics included:

96% of 10,000+ click throughs of our Google Ad campaign from targeted regions outside the Regina area
82,000+ social media impressions, with 9,000+ engagements and a click-through rate of 1.87% (industry average between 0.90 and 1.33%)
Our website, growyourworldregina.com, received more than 9,300 unique visitors during the two-week online campaign
9 TV ads during the Grey Cup pre-game broadcast had a total GRP rating of 9.3 in our target age range of 25 to 54 – for an average viewership of 3.3 million.
Earned media value of our news release and further spinoff stories reached more than 17 million readers, thanks to being picked up by mainstream US media

Challenges & Changes Made

Engaging EDR Partners: As the first true marketing activation for the Place Brand, a key initial challenge was to convey the brand’s value to partners. Ultimately positive partner feedback and strong social engagement and community dialogue proved to be strong success indicators.

Target Audience

Canadians watching the Grey Cup game and located in markets where people are most likely an engaged Grey Cup fan. This included:
Larger cities with dedicated football fans, particularly with playoff-bound teams (i.e. Calgary, Winnipeg, Hamilton)
Southwestern Ontario locations involved in agriculture and/or manufacturing (i.e. Windsor, Kitchner-Waterloo, London)
Visitors to Regina for the Grey Cup Festival and/or Agribition
Out-of-province professionals and skilled tradespeople (i.e. engineers, software developers and project managers) as well those employed in the agtech and manufacturing sectors. These groups are candidates for future residents to help fill the talent shortage in Regina’s key sectors and industries.

Details regarding sustainability

Regina’s Place Brand was created to provide a homegrown, authentic, and consistent narrative for the city – one that speaks to who the people are and what makes the city special. The Place Brand promise is not a tagline. It’s the essence of Regina’s positioning and story – Regina is a place where businesses and people, locally and nationwide, are finding ingenious ways to grow sustainable futures.