Working in the tourism industry is easy when you have a product like Vancouver Vancouver is associated with words like Beautiful Safe Friendly And Green It is a residential city with a mild climate, and is surrounded by nature These are just some of the reasons We are consistently voted one of the world’s most liveable cities.
Working in the tourism industry is easy when you have a product like Vancouver Vancouver is associated with words like Beautiful Safe Friendly And Green It is a residential city with a mild climate, and is surrounded by nature These are just some of the reasons We are consistently voted one of the world’s most liveable cities.
At Tourism Vancouver, we use social media in the way any business or DMO does Here is a snapshot of our blog which launched in the Spring of 2009 It has a stable of many regular contributors and a monthly video segment. It currently has over 90,000 visitors per month I encourage you to check out Insidevancouver.ca
Of course we support our website, our blog and our members through: daily tweets, re-tweets, our flickr pool, our embedded You-tube video page etc. We use these tools to crowdsource content through incentives and draws We have 18,000 twitter followers And 20,000 who currently like our Facebook page
For those who have not visited Vancouver, you are at least aware that we hosted A successful Winter Olympic in 2010. That event caused the New York Times to declare us Manhattan with Mountains And we were now known as A city of international sport and celebration These were the images....then Fast-forward to just over one year later…
This became the new face of Vancouver to the world on June 15, 2011, immediately after the Stanley Cup final. Doesn’t look like Vancouver does it? Cars were torched, business looted, people injured... there were many arrests It was unimaginable and heartbreaking to watch.
A recent study in the UK indicated that 44% of people use social networks while watching TV. Almost immediately, people began to comment and share through social media, providing a live, personal perspective on the riots I myself took comfort in sharing the moment with my own network of friends.
Some people on twitter wrote: “Someone is down on the ground, hurt. Looks like a young girl. Calling for police to help.” Another wrote: “This is sad. People are reportedly looting the Bay” Thankfully, Social Media soon became Vancouver’s way of taking back the city. Almost immediately a volunteer effort was organized thought FB and Twitter
Within a few hours, there were hundreds of people out cleaning up People came out with pails, brooms, rubber gloves and garbage bags and by the time the morning news came on, you could hardly tell there’d been a riot Even local bakeries came out with coffee and pastries for volunteers ...This was the real spirit of Vancouver!
One of the most interesting aspects was the use of social media to identify the rioters Police immediately began crowdsourcing, setting up a Facebook page inviting the public to post evidence They were overwhelmed with the response Some geniuses were busted because they bragged on FB about rioting.
And there were other repercussions Some rioters lost their jobs and in one case a wedding was called off This unfortunate dude, who became the poster child of the riot, actually lost his scholarship and was suspended from his water-polo team. And its sparked debate about social media as judge, jury and even vigilante tool
Social media also became a way to crowd-source acts of heroism. One gentleman had attempted to protect windows at the Hudson’s Bay store and ended up being swarmed as a result. The police have since found and honoured him, and the Bay hosted a pancake breakfast for everyone who helped to clean up and protect their store.
People also began to thank Emergency Workers, the VPD and city engineers. One cop car became covered with post it notes saying thank you, we love you. Others began writing on the plywood that had gone up in place of broken windows. Soon every square inch of every board was covered It became a tourist attraction and a favourite Flickr upload.
Tourism Vancouver met with the agency DDB that afternoon A common goal was established – to give the community one central outlet for “the positive” riot response It was not about “Marketing”, or selling rooms, but about catharsis By that night, a site was launched and populated with content from all forms of social media
The inspiration for this small campaign, was the plywood window board It was the most honest and organic symbol of “The Real Vancouver” It became: Our palate Our thank-you note Our diary, and A love letter to our city Modelled after the boards, We called our new website: THIS IS OUR VANC OUVER.COM
The websites background resembles the plywood And the site Aggregates content from all forms of social media from YouTube video to Twitter posts, from blog sites to Flickr images… It is dynamic and constantly updated There are no logos….no branding....no corporate messaging
DDB created the site using Tumblr, and for those non-techies out there like me, Tumblr is a free blogging platform which: Enables users to share content from other sites instantly and it can be created and populated very quickly – which was important Time was of the essence ...if we were going to contribute in any meaningful way.
The site was Promoted through: Media relations, blogger outreach -- and, almost exclusively social media But Print space for this PSA was also donated by 21 publications to promote the site and give people a hard copy option to the boards which were actually coming down to repair the windows. By the end of the weekend, there were already 10,000 site visits.
It is an Organic public site – and so the content has evolved Riot stuff has been replaced by arts calendars, positive tweets and cool photos of the city As for the boards, the City may eventually preserve them in a local museum. Meanwhile we are deciding on whether our outreach has a new phase, and what that might look like.
....and hopefully begin to rebuild our image. Incidentally that couple kissing in the last slide became local celebs for 15 minutes… Thank you.
