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• The campaign served up 95 million advert banner displays and publications on the Internet, and totted up over 6.7 million views of its videos on Youtube and on social media.

In under two weeks, the #NotWinter Games promotional campaign put together by Promotur Turismo de Canarias achieved over 100 million hits in Europe. The campaign, which was 85% co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER), features a range of pleasurable images of our islands at wintertime, such as sun bathing on the beach, flying kites, jumping on a trampoline, playing with bats and balls, swimming, sailing, playing on the sand… at a time when the media elsewhere were displaying images of snowy, icy sporting competition at the Winter Olympics.

The Internet –and specially on social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Youtube- along with giant digital screens chosen at highly visible spots around London, Berlin and Oslo, were the main means used in a campaign that featured the standout venue of Picadilly Circus. The campaign generated nearly 95 million advert banner displays and publications on the Internet, and totalled over 6.7 million views of its videos on Youtube and social media. The giant screens at the three European capitals, meanwhile, captured a total audience of 6.6 million people. The campaign video was also sent by email to over 700,000 tourists on the Turismo de Canarias database. 

This latest initiative was executed between 12th and 25th February, coinciding with the Winter Olympics, with the purpose of promoting the Canary Island brand and underlining its climatic attributes, and highlighting this clearly evident competitive edge of the islands. The campaign encompassed mainland Spain, France, Italy, Great Britain, Ireland, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Finland, Sweden and Norway, and undertook different lines of action, all of them linked to the campaign’s general focus: the non-winter games.

The Participation of influencers and users

The campaign mixed its own content with other content developed by influencers, including skater Javier Fernández, bronze medallist at the Olympic Games, and by its own users, who were encouraged to upload their own Canary holiday photos onto Facebook and Instagram, with the purpose of enhancing the campaign, which attracted nearly 1,500 participations.

Content created by Turismo de Canarias included photographs and videos, with interviews of passers-by in front of the afore-mentioned screens, and an “official video” of the #NotWinter Games, which highlighted the particular way winter sports are played in the Canary Islands. Some fake Internet “Olympic events” programmes made on the islands constituted other content that added a comical touch to the campaign. In these, tourists were turned into “olympians” by a fake team of sports commentators, and they competed in ad-hoc events such as toweling freestyle, splashing yeah, dune rolling and carnivalling.

Alongside the 6.6 million Europeans who were treated to the stunning images displayed on the digital screens in London, Berlin and Oslo, the results of the campaign registered 25,706,094 advertising banner displays and 3,629,849 video views on Facebook, 6,566,804 advertising hits and 441,161 story views on Instagram, and 2,669,776 video views on Youtube. The media also joined in with the initiative, reaching an estimated audience of 24.1 millions.

Communicating the greatness of the climate with an original tale

The aim of the campaign was to highlight, from a different slant, the excellent climatic conditions in the Canaries, to showcase a personal trait of the Canary Island brand, through a communication route which included other compaigns by the Canary Island brand, such as “After rain ads”, a video recorded on a rainy day in London which was recently awarded the Platinum Prize at the Travel Marketing Awards. This recognition is joined by the nomination to the AMPE prize, awarded by the Spanish Advertising Media Association, for the campaign entitled “Find Me and Lose Yourself”. This is a nature tourism promotional campaign, in which art and photography are joined by bodypainting and an artistic style in which human figures are camourflaged within natural surroundings.

#NotWinter Games focuses on the need to garner attention and generate conversation about the Canary Islands on social media, through content and tactical campaigns that capture the audience’s attention in a way that is different to conventional advertising. It is about designing a new kind of tale, generating complicity with the audience, through messages that respond to their context and to day to day existence, but linked to attributes that reflect the leadership this set of islands boasts.