Featuring Tourism Calgary

Back in 2021, we spoke with our friends at Tourism Calgary to reflect on our thriving relationship and the challenges presented in the early 2020s. We’ve worked with Tourism Calgary since 2019, so from managing to promote tourism through a pandemic to contributing to record-breaking Stampede attendance, it feels like we’ve seen it all together. Through the pandemic, we collaborated to do more with less, always working to ensure that Calgary’s hotels, restaurants, attractions, and other tourism partners had the support they needed to continue to operate. Many partners are still recovering from the pandemic’s effects in 2024, meaning that partner support remains a crucial focus of our efforts together. In recent years, this has looked a bit different as we’ve been able to fully expand our marketing efforts to show our city off to the rest of Canada, the United States, and even parts of Europe.

Here are a few highlights of our programs together in post-pandemic times:

• Partner Program: Since its inception, Tourism Calgary’s Things To Do Co-op Marketing Campaign has been an important partner resource, allowing them access to integrated marketing activities, agency expertise, and incremental media dollars. It has been a staple in our yearly marketing efforts since 2019, and it continues to evolve to suit partner needs as best as possible. In 2023, a total of 88 partner placements were purchased from 22 unique partners, leading to over 230K paid conversions and 440K clicks to partner-sponsored content. This year, 36 unique partners have already bought into various opportunities in the program, just two-thirds of the way through. If you’re a Calgary business interested in joining the program, be sure to check it out here.
• Calgary Stampede: After pandemic restrictions subsided, Calgarians and travellers were itching to experience the Calgary Stampede again. Together with Tourism Calgary, we promoted the Stampede outside of the Local market in Canada an parts of the US through various channels and tactics, striking a balance between raising awareness of this year’s unique experiences and driving direct ticket sales. After strong campaign performance, both in direct ticket sales and awareness raised, the 2024 Calgary Stampede saw record attendance. We were able to capitalize on high demand this year, as our ROAS on Google Search campaigns reached record highs this year.
• B2B: You may have had a chance to check out the impressive new BMO Centre this Stampede season. Leading up to the opening of this new facility, we helped Tourism Calgary get the word out to audiences across Canada, the United States, and Europe that Calgary would soon be Western Canada’s largest meeting and convention destination.
• Ongoing Destination Support: The backbone of our marketing efforts, the Calgary Destination Marketing Campaign communicates all the great things to do in Calgary and area. In the heat of the pandemic, this campaign was scaled back exclusively to locals to focus on supporting local businesses in the absence of travel. The campaign has since expanded to include nearly all of Canada and some select areas of the United States as travel has returned to normal. In 2023, these campaigns drove over 1.1 million referrals to tourism partner websites, and this total continues to grow each year.

At present, Tourism Calgary’s focus is shifting away from pandemic recovery and toward strengthening Calgary’s reputation on the global stage. You may have seen the City of Calgary, Tourism Calgary and Calgary Economic Development make news lately by announcing the new civic brand: Blue Sky City. Research had shown that the ‘Be Part of the Energy’ former brand didn’t resonate with local Calgarians or people outside of Alberta anymore. Thus, they determined it was time for something new and truly representative.

Tourism Calgary and Calgary Economic Development consulted with several organizations across sectors in the city, and, true to Calgary’s diversity, included individuals across ages, genders, ethnicities, and geographic locations. After brand development was complete, Blue Sky City was introduced to locals on the first day of the Calgary Stampede.

The logo and visual identity represent beadwork, capturing “Calgary’s story as a place where people, lands, cultures, and ideas come together.” The beadwork reflects the individuality of all Calgarians, which, when combined, creates a sum of parts greater than the whole.

In the past few years, our campaigns with Tourism Calgary have focused heavily on driving action. With a primary goal of supporting Calgary’s tourism partners and helping them drive business results, we have been laser-focused on building plans that can drive as many conversions at the most efficient cost possible. Through this, we’ve seen much success across different types of goals, whether they be traffic to partner sites, content consumption, ticket sales, event attendance, or even discount pass downloads. However, the new brand will give rise to a new type of opportunity. 

With the brand and visual identity rollout complete for Locals, we will now shift to telling the story across Canada and internationally. This will be a different type of campaign for our groups, as instead of persuading our audiences to buy a ticket to the Stampede or check out one of our great food and beverage partners in the near term, we’ll be speaking with those unfamiliar with Calgary in an attempt to build their perceptions of the city. Be sure to look out for more promotion of the Blue Sky City in 2025 and beyond!