C’est un signe! It’s a sign! É um sinal! International Campaign

Québec International, along with seven major Quebec businesses, has launched a three-phase international digital outreach campaign for 2022–2023 to enhance the region’s standing and attract new workers, students, entrepreneurs and investors from around the world. For the Québec International team and the partners involved, given a context of global competition to attract talent, it was critical to double down on creativity to highlight the distinctive advantages that the greater Québec City region has to offer, like the exceptional quality of life for workers and their families. Designed by the agency Récréation and powered by Hint marketing numérique, this promotion campaign called “It’s a sign!” (“C’est un signe!” “É um sinal!”) aimed to position Québec City as a unique destination for working, studying or running a business. The campaign was rolled out in France, Belgium, Brazil, the United States and the United Kingdom and highlighted the region’s offering, i.e. excellent job opportunities and exciting careers thanks to Québec City’s economic dynamism, as well as the possibility to build a real life project in a friendly, safe and French-speaking environment.

The campaign was designed to help solve an issue that has existed in the region for more than a decade and mobilized the local social and economic stakeholders. In order to counter labour scarcity, an issue spanning several sectors, the Québec City region’s economic development agency and several major businesses from various economic sectors (insurance and financial services, information technology, artificial intelligence and video games) chose once again to join forces. Québec International also had the support of the Government of Quebec in this initiative. In 2022, there were 35,050 vacant positions in the Capitale-Nationale and Chaudière-Appalaches administrative regions. The Québec City census metropolitan area has the lowest unemployment rate among all major Canadian regions (1.7% in April 2023). Primarily, the campaign was meant to showcase Québec City’s living environment to position the region on the international scene and attract talent and businesses to the region. In 2022, the agency contributed to the arrival of 2,975 workers and 1,085 international students, for a total of 7,900 newcomers to the region.

The main goal for the campaign was to attract talent—workers and students—who would like to settle in the Québec City area. The campaign was done in three languages: Portuguese for the Brazilian market, English for the United States and United Kingdom, and French for France and Belgium. To reach each client base, short videos were made, as well as marketing banners (visuals) for landing pages and social media publications. The outreach campaign was split into two types: Google ADS for the research, display (banners and visuals) and video networks (YouTube and Google partners) on the one hand, and social media like Facebook and Instagram on the other. During the first two phases, the campaign generated over 3,000 new visitors on the agency’s websites (Québec First and Québec International). During the third phase, the country with the highest participation was France with 74,517 sessions, almost 54% of all sessions generated by the campaign, followed by Brazil with 52,728 sessions, and Belgium with 10,954 sessions. It is no surprise that the highest performing cities were from France and Brazil: Paris, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Lyon.

Shared through social media, the three short videos were original and surprising and highlighted the advantages of living in Québec City, like the exceptional work-life balance and quality of life. The title, It’s a sign! (C’est un signe! É um sinal!), was intentionally eye-catching to pique people’s curiosity. In one look, talent and investor interest is caught. Different visuals completed the materials and were used on the different platforms.