Who: Tourism Yukon and Air North, Cossette, Jungle Media, The Colony Project (PR),
What: The “2-Hour Trade-In Contest,” a digital and social campaign inviting Vancouver-area residents to exchange any two-hour activity for the chance to win an Air North flight to the Yukon, which is just two hours away from Vancouver.
When & Where: The campaign broke on Feb. 4, and is built around ads on Facebook and Instagram, as well as digital banners.
Why: The campaign is aimed at shifting consumer perception of the Yukon as being impossibly far away, said Benjamin Ryan, chief commercial officer with Air North.
How: The ads highlight two-hour activities, such as a hockey game or concert, and invite people to visit a contest page and submit a photo of a two-hour activity they’d be willing to trade for the chance to win one of 10 pairs of round-trip tickets to the Yukon, courtesy of Air North. Among the submissions: Two hours of snow shovelling, two hours of extreme tree climbing, and two hours of waiting for a Translink bus during a snow storm.
What else: The campaign also featured a two-hour video that appeared as a skippable ad on YouTube. Viewers were told within the first 30 seconds that watching the full video and correctly submitting a code shown throughout would make them eligible to win a pair of tickets. The video contained fun facts about the Yukon and Air North, as well as time wasting content such as watching paint dry, watching cookies bake and outlining the type of wildlife that lives in the Yukon. The video reached more than 16,000 people, with the first successful code submission occurring within 36 hours of its debut. Another pair of tickets is being made available to someone making an offer on the trading site Bunz.
The early results: In its first week, the campaign drove more than 20,000 sessions to the contest page, 91% of whom were first-time visitors to the Travel Yukon site.
And we quote: “What we really love is how fun and untraditional the 2-Hour Trade-In contest is. We’ve received a large number of offers for Canucks tickets and back massages, but a lot of people are willing to give up some pretty interesting activities, like water painting classes and a two-hour snuggle-fest with their dog.” —Jason Marcotte, marketing manager North America for Tourism Yukon.
