The “Move to Timmins” Campaign
Purpose of Project
Timmins, the fourth-largest city in Northern Ontario, is a vibrant regional centre that serves as a medical, retail, and employment hub for a range of rural communities. However, since 1996, a steady population decline has resulted in significant labour shortages across sectors — particularly healthcare, mining, and education.
The Timmins Economic Development Corporation (TEDC), the city’s arms-length community economic development team, hired Hamilton- and Ottawa-based marketing agency Cinnamon Toast to develop and execute the “Move to Timmins: A Workforce and Resident Attraction Marketing Campaign.” This strategic digital marketing campaign aimed to attract people (i.e. skilled workers and their families) from outside of Timmins to move to the city to live and work to meet the demands of the city’s current — and future — workforce.
Effectiveness / Meeting Objectives
To ensure the campaign’s strategy met TEDC’s goals, a range of stakeholder engagement activities, including one-on-one interviews and focus groups with key stakeholders across labour sectors, were conducted.
With a focus on digital marketing, and targeting the three distinct labour sectors Timmins needs to attract, ads ran across a range of platforms — social media, Google, programmatic, and more. Other tactics included a series of blog posts and pitches for local media outlets, content/email marketing, trackable landing pages, job board postings, and podcast ads.
The finalized, bilingual ads are bold, bright, and attractive — designed to entice and allure potential workers and their families to all that Timmins has to offer.
Results for Phase One (June to October 2023):
- Nearly 4 million impressions across Meta, TikTok & LinkedIn
- Over 550,000 ad interactions across Meta, TikTok &LinkedIn
- 750 event completions, with the top event being clicks on to the “Jobs in Timmins” job forum
- 136,000 new users to the “Move to Timmins” website during this phase
Results for Phase Two (January to March 2024):
- Over 4 million impressions across Meta, TikTok & LinkedIn
- Over 500,000 ad interactions across Meta, TikTik & LinkedIn
- 1,159 event completions, with the top event being clicks on to the “Jobs in Timmins” job forum
- 145% increase in new users to the “Move to Timmins” website compared to the previous period (145,000 new users)
Challenges & Changes Made
Challenge: The final approval of creative assets from Council, specifically regarding the photos used, was delayed.
Changes Made: We were able to pivot and have better photos taken and sourced for the final creative assets.
Challenge: Our team had a difficult time getting podcasts to respond to our ad space requests.
Changes Made: We recorded a range of audio ads that we were able to run on Spotify and partnered with one specific (and very responsive) podcaster (The Northern Miner) over the course of the campaign.
Target Audience
- Mining workers within or entering the mining industry in various roles, such as millwrights, truck drivers, drillers, and IT professionals, aged 20 to 45 years old, and located in Southern Ontario, Northern Ontario, Alberta, Nova Scotia, and Quebec.
- Healthcare workers within or entering the healthcare industry in frontline or administrative positions, aged 20 to 45 years old, and located in Southern Ontario, Northern Ontario, and Quebec.
- Education workers within or entering the education sector in primary, secondary, and post-secondary teaching and administrative positions, aged 20 to 45 years old, and located in Southern Ontario, Northern Ontario, and Quebec.
