When analyzing the ability to get on travellers’ destination consideration lists, Quebec faces tough competition.

Unlike other destinations, Quebec does not have a distinctive landmark like the Taj Mahal, Empire State Building or Eiffel Tower. Nor does it have the cultural or social reputation of destinations like Amsterdam or Melbourne. Having no famous visual cue or audacious reputation makes it especially hard to distinguish Quebec’s distinction from other destinations in its advertising.

Every year, Tourism Quebec works on increasing the share of heart of neighbouring markets; Ontario and the US as well as their distant counterpart; France.

However, the truth is that there isn’t one reason to travel to Quebec. There are many.

With all the interplay of vast wilderness and cosmopolitanism implied Quebec is a destination with the power to charm all of your senses. So, we created a media campaign that set its multi-sensory appeal to life.

A strategic decision was made to launch solely through earned media for the first week of the campaign to maximize the Google Quality Score for the video. A war room was put into place to monitor and interact with influencers at all times.

On the Blind Love website, consumers were able to experience two different perspectives; Danny’s viewpoint and the journey of his guide, a Quebec local.

Shorter clips of the main video were pushed through social media and travel websites.

Native integrations were also negotiated with key travel partners.

Additionally, strong personalization tactics came into play. For instance, consumers who had interacted with food content on the interactive website were pushed specific messages around that activity. This allowed us to create multiple audience segments that were then leveraged through programmatic tactics.

The campaign was also made available for the visually impaired through described videos and direct mail in Braille

The film was watched 14 million times and the campaign was an overwhelming success in the targeted markets; U.S., France and Canada.

• Blind Love received international media coverage such as BBC Travel, Ads of the world and Adweek.

• 14 million views and 50,000 shares were generated.

• The campaign even making it into Google's top trend.

• Visits on the website increased by 24%

But most importantly, Quebec saw an incredible increase of 21% in cross border traffic year over year (vs an objective of 9%).

The big idea was to use the media to bring the experience of a trip to Quebec at every step. The strategic mechanism behind the created content allows the user to completely immerse themselves in the tourist destination. Gradually over the different touchpoints, we brought the person to consider Quebec, take interest in its various tourist offerings and finally convert to a trip. The media ecosystem offered the opportunity to interact with relevant content through an ingenious audience structure that served our programmatic investments. The results have by far exceeded expectations and goals at every level.

Tourists come to Quebec to experience its richness through all 5 senses. That’s why we gave an American man, Danny, who has been blind since birth, the opportunity to feel, smell, taste and hear the sights and sounds of Quebec. At each touchpoint of the campaign, consumers could experience how Quebec stimulates all the senses through the perspective of a person who does not have some of them.

Danny’s adventures were featured in an online documentary entitled Blind Love. An extended interactive experience on a micro-site supported the documentary with different points of view and interactive possibilities.

Users could see, and hear Quebec through different types of placement, thus creating a global feel of what is Quebec all about.

The format and the platforms chosen allowed for an easy share amongst consumers and our Search strategy supported all of the buzz that was generated from the Blind Love campaign.

We needed to place Quebec, a French Canadian province with a population of seven million, in the consumer’s list of considered travel destinations in order to make them visit La Belle Province. The ultimate goal was to increase the number of tourists in Quebec by 9% versus the previous year*

* Measured by Cross-Border Traffic