2022 Winner
BronzeBest in Travel and Tourism
Travel Alberta
"Wide Open Spaces"
Initiative
"Wide Open Spaces"
Initiative
Coming out of a year-long lockdown, Canadians were more desperate than ever to get back out into the world. But despite surging demand, new barriers to travel had emerged. Canadians were reporting record levels of mental distress, many still perceived taking a vacation as a serious risk, and from fluctuating restrictions to business closures, trip planning had become more challenging than ever.
Worse still for Travel Alberta, interest levels and searches for Alberta had reached an all-time low. As every travel destination across the world prepared for the most critical and competitive time the industry had ever faced, it needed to get back into the minds of travelers and position Alberta as the ideal place to get a taste of the freedom everyone so sorely missed.
After the longest period of shared stress and confinement in recent history, getting outdoors for the summer was the number one priority for over 75% of Canadians. While lockdowns were in place, travellers had felt their world shrink and many had turned to virtual spaces to combat the feeling, which presented a clear opportunity for them to help expand their view again.
Enter: Wide Open Spaces. A series of virtual vacations that transported would-be travelers to two of Alberta’s most iconic and breathtaking hikes, where they could be enjoyed from the comfort of their sofa. Merging the once-of-a-lifetime experiences of Alberta with all of the enhancements of virtual travel to show their audience the very best version of the province. No hiking gear required.
To recreate the unforgettable experience of trekking through the wilds of Alberta for Wide Open Spaces, it produced a pair of 360-degree videos featuring two of the most distinct locations in the province: Table Mountain, known for its flat-top plateau with stunning views in every direction, and its polar opposite, the Matapiiksi Trail, where sandstone formations have been etched and painted by Indigenous Peoples for centuries. Each one provided their audience with an otherworldly and expansive landscape to explore – the perfect remedy to the confines they’d been living in.
It cast local photographer Kahli April to act as the audience’s personal tour guide pointing out key locations, wildlife, and points of interest from all angles - giving viewers a reason to look around. Special guests like Blackfoot Elder Saa’kokoto stopped by to provide cultural context and explain the significance of the land as you explored it.
Finally, an array of AR elements were overlaid onto the videos to share interesting facts, local photography and distant sights while viewers were led on their journeys.
It planned purposeful media placements to both maximize scale and deliver the most impactful viewer experience possible. Wide Open Spaces was hosted across National Geographic’s global YouTube and Facebook channels and supported by paid tactics that focused exclusively on environments like Instagram and YouTube, primarily on mobile, where audio would be enabled and where the interactive series looked and worked best for their viewers.
Wide Open Spaces, produced in partnership with National Geographic, represents its first-ever branded series of 360 videos globally, providing a massive opportunity for Travel Alberta to engage the fanbase online and generate global reach and attention. The series went far beyond typical 360 video executions and thoughtfully recreated several key aspects of transformational travel, including a compelling cast, cultural insights and a variety of interactive AR overlays designed to immerse audiences in these unforgettable journeys.
Despite a 9% drop in inter-provincial travel searches, it raised Alberta-based travel searches by 19% during the campaign.
The series blew all reach and engagement targets out of the water with 11M impressions (2.8 times over-delivery), 923K video views (1.2 times over-delivery, 152K organic YT views (2.2 times over-delivery), and 2:59 mins avg. time spent (1.5 times benchmark).
Wide Open Spaces brought Alberta’s majestic landscapes and rich history to the comfort of people’s homes and received an overwhelmingly positive response online.
Worse still for Travel Alberta, interest levels and searches for Alberta had reached an all-time low. As every travel destination across the world prepared for the most critical and competitive time the industry had ever faced, it needed to get back into the minds of travelers and position Alberta as the ideal place to get a taste of the freedom everyone so sorely missed.
After the longest period of shared stress and confinement in recent history, getting outdoors for the summer was the number one priority for over 75% of Canadians. While lockdowns were in place, travellers had felt their world shrink and many had turned to virtual spaces to combat the feeling, which presented a clear opportunity for them to help expand their view again.
Enter: Wide Open Spaces. A series of virtual vacations that transported would-be travelers to two of Alberta’s most iconic and breathtaking hikes, where they could be enjoyed from the comfort of their sofa. Merging the once-of-a-lifetime experiences of Alberta with all of the enhancements of virtual travel to show their audience the very best version of the province. No hiking gear required.
To recreate the unforgettable experience of trekking through the wilds of Alberta for Wide Open Spaces, it produced a pair of 360-degree videos featuring two of the most distinct locations in the province: Table Mountain, known for its flat-top plateau with stunning views in every direction, and its polar opposite, the Matapiiksi Trail, where sandstone formations have been etched and painted by Indigenous Peoples for centuries. Each one provided their audience with an otherworldly and expansive landscape to explore – the perfect remedy to the confines they’d been living in.
It cast local photographer Kahli April to act as the audience’s personal tour guide pointing out key locations, wildlife, and points of interest from all angles - giving viewers a reason to look around. Special guests like Blackfoot Elder Saa’kokoto stopped by to provide cultural context and explain the significance of the land as you explored it.
Finally, an array of AR elements were overlaid onto the videos to share interesting facts, local photography and distant sights while viewers were led on their journeys.
It planned purposeful media placements to both maximize scale and deliver the most impactful viewer experience possible. Wide Open Spaces was hosted across National Geographic’s global YouTube and Facebook channels and supported by paid tactics that focused exclusively on environments like Instagram and YouTube, primarily on mobile, where audio would be enabled and where the interactive series looked and worked best for their viewers.
Wide Open Spaces, produced in partnership with National Geographic, represents its first-ever branded series of 360 videos globally, providing a massive opportunity for Travel Alberta to engage the fanbase online and generate global reach and attention. The series went far beyond typical 360 video executions and thoughtfully recreated several key aspects of transformational travel, including a compelling cast, cultural insights and a variety of interactive AR overlays designed to immerse audiences in these unforgettable journeys.
Despite a 9% drop in inter-provincial travel searches, it raised Alberta-based travel searches by 19% during the campaign.
The series blew all reach and engagement targets out of the water with 11M impressions (2.8 times over-delivery), 923K video views (1.2 times over-delivery, 152K organic YT views (2.2 times over-delivery), and 2:59 mins avg. time spent (1.5 times benchmark).
Wide Open Spaces brought Alberta’s majestic landscapes and rich history to the comfort of people’s homes and received an overwhelmingly positive response online.
Credits
Travel Alberta:- Tannis Gaffney - Senior Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer
- Susan Darch - Marketing Director
- Sean Flemmer - Consumer Marketing Manager
- Jillian Hale - Consumer Marketing Manager
- Rose Bolton - Brand and Content Specialist
- Maryanne Doran - Brand and Content Specialist
Initiative Media:
- Olivier Leblond - VP, Client Advice & Management
- Chris Gairdner - Head of Content
- Stefan Ruby - Manager, Content Strategy
- Ryan Gentile - Senior Project Manager
Disney/National Geographic:
- Cat Salt - Head of Planning
- Katie Cowin - Brand Partnerships Manager
- Charlotte Ford - Brand Partnerships Manager
- Beth Nightingale - Digital Account Manager
- Gabrielle Butler - Senior Content Producer
- Kahli April - Contributing Photographer/Video Talent
- Saa'kokoto - Kainai Elder/Video Talent