Canadian tourism marketing guru advises UK2012 Olympic games

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The marketing guru who steered Canadian tourism to no 2 global tourism brand and is busy ensuring an Olympic legacy was in London to advise UK2012.

Greg Klassen, Canadian Tourism Commission’s Senior Vice President of Marketing Strategy and Communications was in London to share his experience of a successful tourism Olympic campaign with his UK counterparts.

So, how does a country get the most out of a mega-event like this and what are the opportunities and risks involved?

Of course, the opportunities are enormous in terms of economic potential, country brand enhancement, regeneration and development, enhanced infrastructure, community pride and environmental awareness…

But the risks are just as great, they include dramatically increased local costs, danger to the brand, inappropriate development, a useless legacy, congestion and excessive energy use.
Many of these dangers can be avoided and the opportunities grasped by the use of skilful marketing.

The winter Olympics in Vancouver were seen as a positive benefit to Canadian tourism, and Greg Klaasen, a long time marketing expert is seen as being a key architect of this success.
What did Greg have to tell the new minister of tourism and the CEO of Visit Britain and his other UK counterparts?

Said Greg: “We saw it as an opportunity to reinvent our brand. We’d seen some decline in tourism and we wanted to go from how we’d been positioning ourselves in our marketing material into something that was a little more active. We recognized that our very greatest opportunity to culminate that brand-building experience was an event that would be broadcast to 3 billion people around the world”

“What kind of assets could we develop in support of that brand, what sort of media packages could we create that were consumable by the world’s media?”. It wasn’t just the people who were coming to watch the games, but most importantly the 3 billion global audience”

As a result, Canadian tourism spent some years creating social media stories, images and TV packages to tell the new story.

Two years before the event, they started to engage with the worldwide media, specifically in their target markets, and woo them. The engagement was made well in advance so the material could get into planning calendars. When the media come for an event there is always down time, and that needs to be filled. Canada tourism created 25 3 minute vignettes from all parts of Canada to fill that downtime. And the media were old friends by the time they came to Canada. “If they wanted doughnuts” said Greg, “We got them doughnuts”.

Surprisingly, the hard work really began on the Monday morning AFTER the closing ceremony. The task was then to convert that warm afterglow and series of fuzzy images into actual long-term business and that’s the task that Canadian Tourism is faced with now.

For there to be a real tourism legacy, the goodwill generated by the winter Olympics now needs to be converted into real hard business. The global travel trade need to know that Canada is open for business.

Obviously, to get to this stage a concerted and focused effort has had to be made but now, after the event, the unremitting hard work has had to begin.

Judging by Greg Klassen’s determination and proven track record, Canadian tourism will get practically the maximum benefits on offer from the Olympics.

Practically? The one omission that Greg highlights was the inability to engage the massive corporate sponsors as effectively as possible.

Visit Britain has a hard act to follow.

Valere Tjolle