Canadian Affair Voted ‘Best TV Travel Ad’

March 22, 2012
By Tom Mountford | No Comments

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A television campaign produced by The JMS Group for the specialist travel marketing agency Conrad Advertising has topped the poll for ‘Best TV Travel Ad’ organised by The Chartered Institute of Marketing.

Over 10,000 votes were submitted by travel professionals from across the UK with Canadian Affair’s ‘Start Your Affair’ winning the coveted number one slot. It was a tight battle with Keycamp who came a close second with Voyage Prive taking third place.

Tour specialists Canadian Affair were determined to start 2012 with an ambitious multi-platform advertising and sponsorship campaign with a cheeky edge and a subtle nod to US show ‘Desperate Housewives’. Conrad’s creative treatment features a kitchen scene with two sophisticated women drinking coffee. Each execution of the three-commercial campaign opens with the same line from one of the women, “I’ve just had the most amazing affair”. She reveals teasing details of her exciting adventures, shopping sprees and wild nights with her new love interest, which is naturally accompanied by appropriate shots of Canada’s best tourist spots, with footage supplied by several Canadian tourism development agencies.

The JMS Group’s Composer Andi Baxter created a bespoke and sultry piano score building in drama as more shots of Canada are revealed – this same theme was carried through into the accompanying radio campaign, also produced by JMS. The three completed commercials (City Breaks, Rail and Cruise, Outdoor and Adventure) were each tagged with an alternate phone number to track effectiveness by television region, with URL-only versions created for online syndication. During production of the campaign we also created a set of sponsorship idents for STV’s television series, ‘Scottish Passport 2012′.

Kathryn Munro, Communication and Marketing Director for Canadian Affair said, “We are truly delighted to have won this award and to have beaten off stiff competition from some big industry names. We were delighted with JMS and Conrad for such an inspirational and fun advert creative. They balanced showing Canada off to its best as well as creating a sense of fun and adventure. The two teams worked seamlessly and were a pleasure to work with.”