Two B.C. tourism campaigns, including the province’s key ad campaign during the Olympics, received five awards at the Canadian Marketing Awards in Toronto on Friday night.
“The past four months of year-over-year increases in overnight international visitors show we’ve been hitting the mark, which is leading to more jobs in our vital tourism sector all over the province,” said Margaret MacDiarmid, Minister of Tourism, Trade and Investment, in a release Monday.
The Canadian Marketing Association’s awards show recognizes Canada’s top marketers in all sectors.
B.C.’s “You Gotta Be Here” campaign for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games won two silver awards in the public service category, one for an integrated campaign and one for promotion.
The campaign included television and web ads featuring B.C.-born celebrities. The web ads received nearly a million hits on YouTube.
Tourism BC’s last ski campaign, the “Great Mountain Giveaway,” took three bronze awards in the consumer services category – for an integrated campaign, for a digital campaign and for direct marketing.
That campaign’s award winners received access to the B.C. ski mountain of their choice for themselves and 19 friends.
From January 1 to September 30 this year, international overnight visitor arrivals to B.C. grew 3.2% to 3,585,857.