Tourism Marketing Campaign Wins
Canada’s Most Prestigious Advertising Award

The Provincial Government’s tourism marketing campaign Find Yourself has won the quintessential award for advertising in Canada, a Grand Prix CASSIES (Canadian Advertising Success Stories). The award was presented last night (Monday, January 23) by the Institute of Communications Agency at the 2012 CASSIES Award show in Toronto. The campaign also took home one gold CASSIES in the Sustained Success category.

“In the world of Canadian advertising, it does not get any bigger than this,” said the Honourable Derrick Dalley, Minister of Tourism, Culture and Recreation. “Many awards programs recognize the creative design, production, and content of the advertising campaign. The CASSIES take it a step further and focus on the tangible results of the advertising campaign. We welcomed over a half-million non-resident visitors in 2010 for the first time in our history so we already knew that our commitment to and investment in the marketing of our province has paid off. This award symbolizes that success and certainly recognizes and honours the efforts of our hard-working marketing team.”

The Find Yourself campaign and other marketing efforts are developed in partnership with Target, a St. John’s-based marketing and advertising firm. To date, the campaign has won 137 awards.

Since its inception in 1993, the CASSIES awards have recognized the business achievements of over 200 campaigns from Canada’s top advertisers and agencies. For more information about the CASSIES, visit www.cassies.ca.

Non-resident visitors to the province in 2010 totalled 518,500, an increase of 7.3 per cent over the previous year (2009). Expenditures were over $410 million. Since 2003, the Provincial Government has more than doubled its tourism marketing budget from $6 million to $13 million.

Budget 2011 Standing Strong: For Prosperity. For Our Future. For Newfoundland and Labrador invested $1.4 million to implement new tourism initiatives.

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Media contact:
Diana Quinton
Director of Communications
Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation
709-729-0928, 631-8155
dianaquinton@gov.nl.ca 

2012 01 24             9:15 a.m.