ZGM is thrilled to announce our team has picked up a Bronze Effie Award for Alberta is Calling! The popular talent recruitment campaign, which helped drive population growth unseen in Alberta in at least half a century, won a 2023 Bronze Effie last week in the category of Government, Institutional & Public Service.
Alberta is Calling
In Summer 2022, ZGM was tasked by the Government of Alberta to play matchmaker for a province hungry for skilled workers and a generation of Canadians longing for opportunity. To increase migration of skilled workers while driving awareness of career opportunities, lifestyle advantages and the lower cost of living in Alberta, our team created and launched Alberta is Calling.
We used humour, iconic Alberta images and indisputable facts around affordability and quality of life. And it worked – almost instantly.
We completed market research to understand current perceptions of Alberta amongst our target audience, and applied that learning to re-position the province and its advantages. The campaign included radio, audio-streaming, digital and social media ads, and a full campaign website. The real talker (and mover!) came last September with a media takeover of Canada’s busiest subway station in Toronto and larger than life billboards at major intersections in Vancouver. We used humour, iconic Alberta images and indisputable facts around affordability and quality of life. And it worked – almost instantly.
The Effie Awards
The Effie Awards recognize the best in marketing effectiveness, meaning campaigns must have a real business impact to receive an award. Winning the Bronze Effie affirms something our team has (humbly) known for a while: If there’s one thing the Alberta is Calling campaign achieved, it was results.
If there’s one thing the Alberta is Calling campaign achieved, it was results.
In the first two months of the campaign, there were more than 650,000 visits to the website. The campaign received 144 million impressions, 25,000 Twitter impressions, and several thousands of email subscribers. Ten major mainstream media publications shared stories about the campaign and social media posts took on a life of their own. Most telling, however, was the almost immediate boost in population. According to Statistics Canada, Alberta's population grew by 60,000 in the quarter following the campaign– more than any other year since they began estimating populations in 1951.
This is ZGM’s second Bronze Effie Award for a Government of Alberta campaign. In 2021, our agency won a Bronze Effie Award for Covid Loves, a campaign that encouraged a harder-to-reach younger audience of Albertans to follow COVID-19 public health guidance.
To check out this year’s winning campaign, visit Alberta is Calling.ca.