The Challenge
When the COVID-19 pandemic paused in-person events, live arts goers grew accustomed to settling for home entertainment. As a result, these audiences were slow to return to live performances even years after the pandemic had ended.
By funding an international marketing campaign, Prairies Economic Development Canada aimed to bring back awareness of the live arts and encourage audiences to once again support local performances. This campaign would unite the efforts of 13 live arts groups across three provinces, making it the broadest collaborative initiative ever seen in the country’s live arts sector.
The Solution
In the early stages of the project, our strategy team conducted surveys with arts organizations across the three provinces the campaign would run in—Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
This preliminary research allowed us to identify which organizations would be interested in supporting our efforts through earned media, making it easier to leverage their help later on. It also helped us gather key audience insights that would determine our campaign’s core focus: the unique, immersive experience of live arts.
By focusing our creative on the unmatched emotional experiences of attending orchestra, opera, theatre, dance and live arts events as a whole, we could remind audiences of what they’re missing out on and invite them to return with a renewed excitement.
To maximize our reach among the target audience, we adopted a multi-channel strategy, blending digital and traditional advertising with PR.
We deployed billboards across five major cities in the Canadian prairies (Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon, Calgary, and Edmonton), creating a strong physical presence and fueling a local impact.
Video ads also played a pivotal role in building awareness. Through Connected TV, we launched a 30-second video ad that capture the emotional depth of attending live performances. On Meta and TikTok, we promoted a wide mix of video ad content, including organic-feeling content of audience members sharing their perspectives and clips that highlighted the sensory richness of the live arts.
Our static ads on Meta were designed to capitalize on the interest generated by video ads, encouraging users to click through and explore events. We also deployed Google Display static image ads to further increase visibility online.
All our creative efforts encouraged our audience to visit the campaign landing page, where they could discover nearby live events and venues. This page also made it easy to download many of our creative assets, which supported our efforts in earning coverage from news media, content creators and interprovincial arts organizations (including the ones we had previously reached out to).
Results
The campaign achieved exceptional visibility among our large target audience, with digital efforts alone generating a total of 31 million impressions.
Each ad platform played a vital role in ensuring the Prairie Arts message was seen consistently. On TikTok, our ads reached 420k users every 6-7 days, while on Meta, they reached approximately 800k users approximately once every 3-4 days.
The campaign’s content resonated strongly with the target audience. Video ads on Meta achieved a high average completion rate of 54.2%, with the top-performing video reaching an impressive 88.98% completion rate. Additionally, Meta image ads alone generated over 40,000 clicks to the campaign landing page.
All digital ads outperformed industry benchmarks, achieving low CPC (cost-per-click) rates on platforms like Google Display and TikTok.
Beyond digital performance, the campaign garnered significant attention from external media. It was featured in news networks (online, in print, and on broadcasts) and mentioned in podcasts. Arts organizations across the Prairies amplified the campaign further by posting its assets 25 times across Meta, X, and TikTok, providing high-quality engagement and extended reach.
31 million Impressions from digital efforts
420k TikTok users reached every 6–7 days
800k Meta users reached every 3–4 days
54.2% Video completion rate on Meta
40k Clicks on Meta ads