What is the goal or purpose of this project and how did you accomplish it?
Economic development agencies like Montréal International (MI) play a key role in the climate transition as they are uniquely positioned to target and select projects that can help shift the needle in the climate crisis.
The Think Montréal campaign was an opportunity for us to step up to that role, and to send a strong message that Greater Montréal is equipped and ready to make a positive impact when it comes to the future of our planet. Every day, we’re working to electrify our transportation networks, develop sustainable aviation, reduce the carbon footprint of our buildings and reinvent the way food is grown.
Above all, our goal was to promote Montréal’s cleantech capabilities to potential foreign investors and inspire them to set up subsidiaries here. We targeted upper management (CEOs, CFOs, VPs, owners, partners, directors and managers) in San Francisco, New York, Paris and Stockholm.
To achieve that, we created a powerful and inspiring video to showcase Montréal’s expertise as well as a new webpage (with a sector profile). We promoted the video in an awareness and lead generation campaign on YouTube and LinkedIn from March 18 to June 10, 2024 with three key phases: awareness, consideration and conversion. By sharing the video with multiple prospects, we were able to create a retargeting audience, which we then used for our lead generation and document ads campaign. This allowed us to collect invaluable data for our prospecting team.
(Note that the project budget includes the creation of the video)
Describe the roles and relationships of everyone involved in the project.
The entire digital campaign was designed, programmed and deployed exclusively by the Montréal International team, without any help from third parties. Céline Clément, Senior Director, Marketing & Communication, Guillaume Courchamp, Senior Advisor and Sarah Archambault, Project Manager at Montréal International led and oversaw the campaign from start to finish.
The campaign was funded by the Government of Canada (Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions).
The video was closely supervised by Montréal International’s Director of Brand Image, Yohann Rabusseau and was made possible thanks to the financial support of the City of Montréal and the Government of Canada. More than 25 key partners contributed to its content, including MILA, Bombardier, BrainBox AI, Hydro-Québec, CDPQ Infra, H55, ICAO, CHUM, Lion Electric and Sollum.
The video was brought to life by Greater Montréal’s unique creative talents:
• ALT production house oversaw the production
• Design and animation studio Conifère crafted the animations and motion design
• Studio Outpost handled the post-production
How effective has it been in furthering economic development in your community? Any spin-off or intangible outcomes? Include metrics when possible.
Overall, the results far exceeded our expectations. We have succeeded in increasing the association between Montreal and clean technologies. Although we were working with a limited budget, we generated over 1.8 million views and 4.8 million impressions across all platforms.
The awareness campaign allowed us to create a successful lead generation campaign, which led to valuable results in just five weeks. As of June 10, the campaign has attracted more than 70 foreign investor leads, which could potentially lead to companies setting up subsidiaries in Montréal.
At the same time, our new cleantech sector page has generated 3,500+ visits and counting in less than three months.
The campaign also resonated with the local business community. Our first LinkedIn post announcing the campaign launch generated close to 1,000 engagements (4.5% engagement). It was reposted 78 times by accounts with a combined total of over 2 million followers (including International Civil Aviation Organization, UN Biodiversity, Bombardier, Quebec delegations and so much more) along with various influencers—all helping to boost the reach and impact of our campaign both locally and abroad.
The campaign attracted media attention, too, with two published articles. And several partners, as Tourism Montréal and the City of Montréal, included information about the campaign in their newsletters.
It’s no easy feat to talk about such an important but relatively new topic, all while engaging a strategic audience and making sure we stand out from the competition. We managed to create an original and powerful video that checked all those boxes. In just 60 seconds, we captured the extraordinary potential of clean technologies in Montréal in a way audiences could easily understand.
Just one of the ways we were able to create unique content was by illustrating the diverse sectors where clean technologies can be used. We also used an AI voiceover, which is a completely new approach (in both french end english). We collaborated with a production firm specializing in motion design to bring even more creativity and originality. We then captured key elements of that video to portray a series of static images for our campaign and to create a shorter version of the video, knowing online audiences have short attention spans.
What also makes our project avant-garde is the fact that an economic development agency is taking such a strong stance in support of the environment, without considering the spin-offs solely in terms of financial contribution. We’re proud to have created a campaign that brings clean technology to life in a creative and positive way, cutting through the noise and making a real impact.
How did you overcome them?
Our first challenge was to create a promotional video about cleantech without greenwashing, which could obviously damage the reputations of both our organization and the city. To overcome this, we showcased Montréal’s strengths and commitment to cleantech while emphasizing that there’s still a lot of work to be done and progress to be made to build a more sustainable economy.
Another challenge was reaching a very specific target. Because cleantech crosses so many different sectors, we targeted potential investors in artificial intelligence, agriculture, aviation, transportation, space technology, biotechnology, IT, business software, energy, recycling materials and more. We used YouTube to build notoriety among selected audience segments and leveraged LinkedIn to target very specific profiles. We then used retargeted audiences on LinkedIn to continue with our marketing funnel.
This strategy, however, presented another challenge: our audience, already small during the first phase (awareness) became even smaller during the third phase (conversion). So we adjusted our strategy by including in the conversion phase our target audience from the awareness phase who hadn’t necessarily interacted with our ads. This adjustment allowed us to attract people who hadn’t yet shown an interest in the campaign. By doing so, we were able to increase the number of leads by 590%.
We believe this campaign can serve as an inspiration for all organizations looking to attract foreign direct investment, specifically in cleantech. And more broadly, we hope it inspires investment in clean technologies to help create a greener future for Greater Montréal but also the entire planet.
This campaign also shows how impactful a digital video can be in raising global awareness. We’re proud of the results we achieved, especially with a limited budget.
The Think Montréal campaign serve as a great example of how to combine creativity and marketing expertise—and apply them to digital media to create a successful paid ad campaign spanning four cities and three countries. We managed to raise awareness and capture an impressive number of leads in a very short period with a very limited budget.
Cleantech is still a fairly ambiguous sector (but so strategic for all of us). Our challenge was to showcase the potential of cleantech in Montréal. With that in mind, we had to reach a very specific target and use our limited budget in the best possible way. We leveraged our impactful 60-second video to create short-form versions as well as engaging visual ads. We adapted our content to the different paid media platforms and for the three phases of our paid advertising campaign rollout (awareness, consideration and conversion).
Above all, this project will inspire other economic development agencies to promote their regions in order to attract key projects that will benefit the whole planet. We have a key role to play here.
Economic development agencies often base their goals and measure their success on prospecting and short-term results. With campaigns like this, we hope to inspire other agencies to leverage digital promotion to support their prospecting activities as its impact is undeniable.
