The Challenge
How do you outperform a record-breaking 2021 season in a landscape with increased noise & competition?
As Santa and his elves work year-round to deliver the holiday spirit to everyone on the nice list, the Kipling team got straight to work to create a magical holiday campaign for the Vancouver Christmas Market.
Building on our massive success in 2021, we used last year’s learnings to optimize our content creation, experiential marketing, and out-of-home marketing efforts, allowing us to turn an already successful marketing strategy in 2021 to a scaled and effective 2022 campaign.
The collaborative efforts of our performance marketing team, designers, videographers, PR and sponsorship coordinators led to the event’s second consecutive year of record-breaking foot traffic.
The Objectives
Drive ticket sales
Through a cohesive multi-channel marketing strategy
Engaging new media to cover the event
Through an innovative PR strategy
Generate online conversation
By amplifying our content creation & social strategy
Our Solution
Making Spirits Brighter
Generating National Interest
Public Relations & Earned Media
Our comprehensive public relations strategy for the Vancouver Christmas Market drove widespread media coverage including broadcast, radio, news clippings, profiles, calendar listings, and more.
We coordinated 20 interviews from broadcasters across Canada, including: Global TV, Global National, CBC National, OMNI TV, Fairchild TV, Shaw TV, CTV, City TV, and Xinhua News Agency.
Unique to this year was Global National’s coordination to film the Prime Minister’s holiday address at the Market. National and international interest followed that interview as the country watched the Prime Minister outline the successes and failures of the year, with Vancouver Christmas Market serving as a natural background to the broadcast.
How we did it:
- Developing and implementing a comprehensive PR strategy.
- Preparation of media kits, backgrounders, ticketing previews, and press releases.
- Organizing media and influencer events, including invitations, on-site coordination, and event advisories.
- Facilitating sponsor news releases.
- Story ideas, interview pitches, ongoing media contact re enquiries, image requesting, ticketing, and much more.
Beforehand, we coordinated sponsorship and fielded new partnerships from like minded organizations such as Nobis (Official Outfitter of the Vancouver Christmas Market), Interac (HolidayLife Carousel presented by Interac), and Global TV (Official Television Partner).
Campaign Performance
Digital Advertising, Social Media, Paid Media Buy
Event marketing involves a straightforward, yet tricky strategic process. To craft an effective campaign, each campaign asset you create must immerse the audience into the environment of the event, visually articulating the experience one will have when they visit the event.
The Kipling team built on our successful campaigns and executed new ideas to spread awareness and drive traffic to the Market. Weaving together magical visuals and creative, carefully curated promotions to students and couples, across our digital and organic advertising campaigns and media partnerships. grew Vancouver Christmas Market’s overall reach substantially.
‘Tis the Season for Creativity
Graphic Design, Photography, and Content Creation
We also expanded our creative scope in 2022, with an emphasis on graphic design, content creation, photography, videography, and web management. These creative efforts allowed us to successfully generate hype though outdoor billboard and transit placements throughout the season. On top of that, our videographers captured content that we positioned in digital advertising and that can be leveraged by the Market for years to come.
Among other things, our graphic designers and photographers came up with a compelling new brand identity, exemplified by our venue maps, media event invitations, banner videos, reels, and content for nearly a dozen sub-campaigns.
We also provided several website updates, as the Vancouver Christmas Market needed new web content, a better user experience, and security reinforcements to lend users a ‘jolly’ digital experience. We noticed that users needed a clear direction to convert, especially on mobile devices, so we upheaved the user flow and UX changes to improve conversion rates.
The Results
391
Earned media clippings
54.3%
Instagram follower growth
1,158,638
Website sessions
