Place Branding

The Invest in Iconics Strategy is a long-term strategy which focuses on creating globally compelling destination brands for a small number of routes and places across BC to elevate them to compete on the world stage. The development of these brands goes hand-in-hand with destination development activities, to ensure that the emotional promise of the new route and place brands is delivered by on-the-ground experiences when visitors arrive and travel in BC.

Place Branding for the Invest in Iconics Strategy is about taking BC’s extraordinary routes and places and making them even more globally compelling than they are now. The Invest In Iconics Strategy presents our province in a new way to allow us to strengthen our voice, collectively, and to create storylines about our routes and places that ignite the imagination and fuel a desire to experience them. Potential travellers will see our destinations with new eyes, giving them a simpler path to purchase, and moving them from dreaming, to booking, more quickly.

We have identified routes and places that, in total, cover the entire province. With consistent, collective investment in place branding and destination development over the next few years, each has the potential to become iconic and compete on a global stage.

Iconics Place Branding Process

The process to create the new place brands is extensive and follows a standard approach to branding, with the following components:

• In the Research Phase, we understand and review consumer research, competitive destination research, sentiment analysis, brand audits, and more. In the Engagement Phase for engagement, we undergo extensive engagement (Indigenous communities and businesses, tourism industry representatives and residents). The purpose is to validate the Iconics – what they are, where they are, and how many there are. It is in this phase where we gather valuable input into the development of each Iconic’s brand.
• Following this is Brand Strategy Development which includes developing brand architecture and brand strategy (target audience, essence, promise, values, unique selling propositions (USPs), positioning, name, story) for each iconic route/place.
• In the Brand Creative Development and Testing Phase, we begin to develop visual identities for each Iconic and undertake consumer testing, creative development, and the production of marketing assets like itineraries, stories, and advertising.
• We then move to the Brand Implementation Phase, where we develop brand guidelines, toolkits, communication tools, and a brand implementation plan for Destination BC and our partners to implement and align with the new brands.
• Finally, we will move to Brand Launch and Marketing Phase. This is where we develop and implement marketing activities for all channels to launch the Iconics brands to industry, trade, media, and travellers.