BIG NEWS! In October, 2019, HMI received a W3 “Best in Show” award for Creator House Banff, as chosen by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts. We are so pleased to share honours with such big brands as BMW, Crayola, Johnnie Walker, and more.

Surrounded by unlimited potential, the Creator House concept challenged creators across multiple mediums to create their own Banff experience. Influencers soared high above the Rockies in a helicopter tour, wrangled huskies to speed across the snow in dog sleds, tasted culinary feats at fine dining restaurants, and unleashed their creativity to showcase the Canadian Rockies in new and exciting ways.

Banff is the quintessential winter destination with its snow-covered mountains, a quaint village to walk through, and picturesque scenery. Canadians and tourists alike flock to Banff; the air is magic and the nature stunning. Banff has no problem generating visitation in the summer months, however, encouraging the world to experience a Canadian winter is where the challenge lies.

From January through March of 2019, creators from all across the world, selected via an application process, visited Banff on a rotating basis. Each stayed in a custom-appointed suite – the “Creator House” – for an average of five days and had the freedom and flexibility to explore the area without the restraints of an itinerary.

“Banff Centre is proud to be the base camp for Creator House,” said Acting Director of Communications, Jenny Spurr. “As Canada’s leading postgraduate arts and leadership school, Banff Centre has been a creative outpost for artists, leaders, and thinkers for over 85 years. It is an honour to work with Travel Alberta and HMI to give even more creators an opportunity to make extraordinary new work in a truly breathtaking setting.”

Objectives

This project, based on a concept developed by ourselves at Hecktic Media Inc. (HMI), and executed in collaboration with Travel Alberta, brought together several industry partners: Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Banff & Lake Louise Tourism and several local operators—including Alpine Helicopters, SkiBig3, and Snowy Owl Sled Dog Tours.

The intention of the campaign was to:

  • Highlight Banff Centre as a cultural and creative hub in Banff.
  • Showcase Banff through the eyes of artistic creators/influencers.
  • Give creators the freedom to experience the Banff that they want to experience.
  • Enable experiences that drive online conversation and interest in the destination.
  • Create an authentic conversation about the destination with the influencer’s audience.
  • Produce a continuous stream of shareable and original content from Banff.
  • Generate digital assets for use by Travel Alberta and Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.
Image by @annamcnaughty

Strategy

Creators/influencers were invited to apply and selected based not just on the size of their audience, but on the authenticity of their following. From invitation to each trip’s completion, HMI, Travel Alberta, and Banff Centre worked with the influencers to ensure they had the tools and activities necessary to catapult their content. Through this process, unique and breathtaking content was produced across multiple mediums and channels.

The strategy included:

  • Vetting applicants deeply to only select creators with an authentic and engaged audience.
  • Selecting creatives that had a truly artistic spin on their travel content.
  • Utilizing the unique talents of each creator to devise fresh content for their in-kind experiences. No influencers were compensated for their coverage of the journey.
  • Providing access to auxiliary tools (i.e. a GoPro Hero 7) and exclusive facilities at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (i.e. a recording studio) to enable seamless content production.
  • Working closely with local operators to give the creators once-in-a-lifetime (but replicable) experiences
Influencers/Creators: Lennart Pagel, Chris Hau, Lizzie Peirce, Ashlyn George, Matt Scobel, HB Mertz, Jasmine Chen, Martina Gebarovska, Jake Graham, James Bonanno, Anna McNaught, Rachel Pohl, Charles Post, Jessica Kleiner, Shem Hooda, Mike Mattera, Andrew Huang, Berty Mandagie, Emily Mandagie, Alyssa Lau, Nick Verbelchuk, Angela Liguori, Brendin Kelly, Lauren Meeker, Corey Hill, Nathan Lee Allen, Tyler Glass.

Content samples:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For more samples, see this Pinterest page.

Results

The content produced crossed over multiple genres and beyond travel, including music, graphic design, painting, and photography. Millions of people were organically reached across all major social media platforms and several blogs.

Results Summary:

  • 15.2 million+ total organic reach via influencer channels
  • 1.8 million+ total engagement on influencer channels

Instagram: Over 200 posts generated 1.4 million+ engagements.
Instagram Stories: 887 stories generated 3.7 million+ views.

YouTube: 7 videos garnered 441 thousand+ views and 40 thousand+ likes and comments.

Facebook: 52 posts attracted 11 million+ views, 150 thousand+ engagements, and 219 thousand+ shares.

Twitter: 63 tweets reached 80 thousand+, and received 3 thousand+ engagement.

Blogs: 9 unique posts attracted 8 thousand+ visitors and 10 thousand+ pageviews.

Testimonials

“Creator House is the exact program we’ve been looking for as content creators. Having access to our own room and vehicle to be able to roam and capture content on our own terms is fundamental in creating meaningful and purposeful content. The team behind the program were thoughtful, fun, caring and extremely insightful. I would 100 per cent recommend this format to other tourism agencies looking to promote their destination. Can’t wait to come back!” – Chris Hau (creator)

“Working with the Creator House was absolutely incredible! As photographers and travelers, we’ve worked with a number of different companies that usually give us a strict itinerary or put us with groups that we don’t know.  What we loved about Creator house was total freedom and flexibility to experience Banff the way we wanted to! With no itinerary, other than activities that we had chosen from a large list of options, we were free to explore and create in ways that inspired us the most.  It was also a nice chance for us to hang out just the two of us! To top it all off, the team was awesome!  Friendly, accommodating, and easy to work with. We can’t say enough good things about Creator House!” – Anna McNaught (creator)

“Being a travel blogger and photographer, I attended many press trips all around the world in the last few years. All of them having jam-packed itineraries that didn’t really give us, creators a space to do our own things in our own time. That’s why I and my friend Jasmine loved the concept of Creator House Banff. It was fantastic to have our own room and vehicle, so we’ve had that much-desired freedom in order to be able to create a unique and genuine content we creators always aim of. This way, we were able to visit less known places, take photos during the best light condition and with no time pressure. We were also free to choose various activities or to pick different restaurants whenever we needed to fuel up. I have never had such refreshing freedom on any of the previous travel campaigns I was part of, and I wish more tourism agencies would use this wonderful format. It was just so unique and splendid!” – Martina Gebarovska (creator)