POV: Your summer vacation plans

This year’s campaign creative plays on a popular social media trend called “POV” or “Point of View”, which uses videos and photos to show an experience from a first-person perspective.

Using “POV” as the creative theme, Travel Manitoba created a new series of print, video and social media ads that showcase summer travel experiences from a first-person perspective, including road trips, stunning stays, and northern, Indigenous and Winnipeg itineraries.

Campaign goals include driving overnight bookings, increasing awareness of attractions and experiences, and increasing business leads to tourism partners throughout the province.

The campaign will run from April until September in primary target markets of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Northwest Ontario, North Dakota and secondary markets including Alberta, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Ottawa and Toronto.

Campaign tactics include print, radio, connected TV/OTT, public service announcements (PSAs), digital search and display, and social media advertising alongside sponsored content partnerships and travel media and influencer relations activities to encourage content creators to promote Manitoba on their own channels. French advertising will appear throughout the campaign for targeted French-speaking audiences.

Travel Manitoba recently launched a fly-in fishing campaign, a partnership with Destination Canada and Tourism Saskatchewan to recover U.S. anglers from nearby markets. Additional marketing efforts include hunting and angling promotions on Facebook, Instagram and through Google.

Hunt Fish Manitoba is also promoting content through partnerships with Outdoor Sportsman Group, Fishing the Wild West, Jason Mitchell Outdoors, Angling Edge TV and The New Fly Fisher.

Travel Manitoba is also launching a new Manitoba Experience Pass called the Manitoba Kids Choice Pass this summer. The pass offers exclusive discounts at partnering attractions like the Manitoba Children’s Museum, the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada, and the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre.

Travel Manitoba will also be running a contest through the Manitoba Explorer program to encourage more residents to sign up and use the app. By checking-in at various points of interest throughout the province, users can earn digital badges and physical pins.

In May, the organization will launch new limited edition summer products for its Manitoba lifestyle merchandise line. Products will be available in person at Visitor Information Centres at The Forks and in Emerson, as well as online through shoptravelmb.ca.

Sponsored content for this year’s campaign includes a partnership with CTV Morning Live and North Dakota Today for live on-air and on-location promotions of attractions in Winnipeg and throughout Manitoba. The CTV Morning Live spots will begin airing once a week starting in May. The North Dakota Today segment is slated for later in the summer.

A partnership with Lonely Planet will launch this summer using their “Swipe, Save, Go” feature on Instagram. The feature is a profile series that includes 10 stylized carousel images using materials from Travel Manitoba partners and is shared to Lonely Planet’s 3.2 million followers.

This summer, Travel Manitoba will become a member of the Culinary Tourism Alliance with an enhanced destination presence on canadaculinary.com, including new blogs and short videos around agritourism, culinary events, restaurants and Manitoban chefs as part of the profile. More promotions will be added in the future.