Move to Minto
The Town of Minto is an amalgamated, rural community located in southwestern Ontario with a population of 9,000. Move to Minto is the Town of Minto’s resident attraction program/campaign. The main goal of the campaign is to increase awareness and consideration of Minto as a preferred destination for a new home and life among a targeted audience of families, young couples and retirees that are considering a move away from nearby cities south of Minto (1 – 1 ½ hours).
The Town of Minto has a well-established municipal tagline that connects its communities: Where Your Family Belongs. The tagline for the Move to Minto campaign leverages the municipal tagline – “You Belong Here”. We selected this tagline because belonging is the core feeling people seek, and a sense of belonging is fundamental to how humanity organizes itself. Related to this campaign, it is the primary purpose of the Town’s economic, cultural and residential development efforts. Using the word “you” makes the statement relevant and inclusive to anyone who reads it, while reflecting the Town’s commitment to building a welcoming community.
The Town of Minto worked with Memory Tree Productions to create a video that showcased our community in an authentic way that really drove home the message of “You Belong Here”. It pulls on heart strings and really draws the audience in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9umHoXLoA8 – 15 sec clip
To achieve our goal to increase awareness we paired complementary Google Display Network and TrueView Video ads on YouTube to maximize exposure and views inside our target markets, with copy focused on welcoming communities, friendly neighbours, and belonging. This copy was directly informed by the content of the website, and the images and video that were provided, ensuring cohesive branding and messaging.
Total Ad Placements across the Display Network and YouTube to build brand awareness: 416.3K
Total Ad Clicks on Display and Video Views on YouTube (shows consideration & education): 56.7K
High Interest Actions: 120 (indicating significant research on the website, intent, and/or likely direct contacts)
To-date (May 1, 2022 – August 11, 2022) the full two-minute video has been viewed 3,311 times and the short 15-second commercial used in the campaign has been viewed 43,757 times. The website during the same time has had 2,500 visits.
Memory Tree Productions and the Town of Minto were recently recognized with a Communicator Award for the Move to Minto video. The Communicator Awards honour excellence in strategic, effective, and meaningful communication across digital, video, podcasts, marketing, mobile, print and more. The Award of Excellence, is the highest honour and is given to those entrants whose ability to communicate positions them as the best in the field.
In terms of challenges and changes made or that will be made to the campaign, we discovered that audiences prefer short video clips. Additional 15-second ads will be created, with each focusing on a different element of the longer video but complimentary to it.
Regarding sustainability of this program and being mindful of the community, we engaged real estate developers and local real estate agents in focus groups early in the campaign creation process. This provided insight into the demographic groups that are interested in Minto, the locations people were coming from, and what people were looking for in the community to build our brand identity, campaign and video. We have shared the link to the video with our developers and agents to use in their marketing efforts to further increase brand awareness.
All elements of the video feature residents, businesses and locations and we honoured this by hosting a Video Launch Event in March at our theatre where we invited all of the individuals who participated in the video to watch it before it was released in May.
