Encouraging Canadians to rediscover their sense of adventure and freedom
Go RVing Canada is coming off one of their most successful years to date as they embarked on a mission to go farther, take people places they had never been and encourage them to seek out new adventures. In step with the changing media landscape, Go RVing Canada spent the past year evolving their communications approach to reach Canadians in impactful ways online, in print and in unexpected places.
Go RVing Canada launched the Wildhood campaign with the aim to help Canadians reconnect with their sense of childhood adventure, and to encourage all Canadians to tap into their natural born camper. Through Wildhood, Go RVing Canada continues to help Canadians rediscover the craving for exploration, adventure, curiosity, kinship and freedom we all knew as children, but may have forgotten as we took on the responsibilities of adulthood.
The campaign concept, created by partner agency ds+p, encourages more Canadians to try RVing and highlights the amazing possibilities the RV life-style can offer. Wildhood launched in Canada with 30-second radio spots in both English and French. The campaign featured public relations sup-port as well as a national 30-second TV spot that launched in March. The Wildhood manifesto, along with 60-second videos in English and French, can be found on GoRVing.ca.
A fully integrated agency team provides support, with broadcast media buying conducted by Starcom MediaVest Group, web design by Level, and public relations, social media and digital media buying by Edelman.
The initial success of Wildhood has taken the Canadian industry by storm. To date, the Wildhood spot on has logged over 1.5M video views on Youtube and through broadcast was recently nominated for two industry North American advertising awards. As the association looks ahead to 2016, it will grow the success of this cam-paign and ultimately expand Wildhood to address specific tactical barriers such as affordability, drivability and lifestyle perception.
“Tactically the majority of our advertising efforts of Go RVing Canada lead consumers to the gorving.ca website. This portal continues to serve as a wealth of information for anyone interested in the RV lifestyle – whether they plan to purchase, rent, or want to explore campgrounds across Canada on their next RV adventure”, says Christopher Mahony, Executive Director, Go RVing Canada.
During 2015 the association grew its RV dealer listing website traffic by over 24%, which resulted in a record year with over 500,000 searches and visits to RV dealer listings on the web-site. To replace the leads program our RV dealer email system now allows consumers to request a list of RV dealers nearby to be sent directly to their inbox. To date, over 80,000 dealer listings have been sent and these have lead to increased referrals to external RV dealer websites.
The association also maintains a range of interactive tools on the website, designed to engage consumers and offer more ways to research RV types and learn about RV dealerships. Among the newest tools is the Persona Quiz, set up as a questionnaire to dis-cover travel habits and vacation destination preferences in order to help guide consumers to their ideal type of RV. Upon completion, the consumer is asked to compare RV types and find the nearest RV dealer. In only a few months we have seen over 56% of users who tried this quiz completed these conversions and moved further down the purchase funnel – a resounding success. Also worth noting is the extensive data gathered provides key insight into the habits and demographic types of consumers interested in the RV lifestyle, and helps inform future content development and initiatives designed to ultimately send more traffic to RV dealers.
In the coming year, Go RVing Canada will continue to encourage Canadians to rediscover their sense of adventure and freedom – everything that makes the RV lifestyle special. Go RVing Canada plans to expand their suite of digital tools to include cost-calculators to show the affordability of the RV lifestyle, microsites that will feature innovations for each RV type, and an upgraded Canada-wide interactive RV trip planner to encourage social sharing of destinations across Canada. Additionally, it will host the second annual National RV & Camping Weekend, working in partnership with campgrounds and RV dealers across the country.
The 2016 Go RVing Canada dealer tie-in program will expand with over 20 new lifestyle images and 5 minutes of fresh video content. In addition to the archive of RV lifestyle media, tie-in dealers also benefit from monthly social media content calendars as well as consistent PR updates. Dealers are encouraged to participate in the many Go RVing Canada activities that ultimately help bring media to on-the-ground experiential efforts. The program also provides training and information through its webinar series as well as PR communication and media kits. Dealers are encouraged to make use of these assets as well as the many Go RVing Canada resources available to them.
For more information about the Go RVing Canada programs please contact Chris Mahony at chris@gorving.ca
