The City of Airdrie’s Economic Development team won a Marketing Canada award on Sept. 29 in the advertising category from the Economic Developers Association of Canada (EDAC) for the Take Your Business to New Heights campaign.
“It’s really nice to have that peer recognition on a national level,” said Economic Development Officer Sara Chamberlain.
“There’s a lot of great economic development organizations out there doing great things.”
The national award is the second time the campaign has been honoured since it was launched in September 2013, according to Chamberlain.
“We received (an award) in April from the Economic Developers Alberta so obviously we were proud of our work then, as we are now, but this one feels really good because it’s on a national level,” she said.
The city’s campaign was developed to help promote Airdrie in other municipalities.
“Last year and again starting this fall, we have ads at the Calgary (International) Airport in the departure lounges, on billboards on the QE2, and then we have also used it at a number of specialized events,” Chamberlain said.
For instance, we did special advertising at the oilsands trade show in Fort McMurray and there’s advertising in the Fort McMurray and Grande Prairie airports as well.”
“The whole idea is we’re looking to target business decision makers who we suspect are traveling on business in and out of Alberta and specifically those from 35 to 55 because we think that fits well with the Airdrie demographic. That’s who the creative concept was targeting; fun, youthful, dynamic.”
Chamberlain said the team is particularly proud of the awards the campaign has received because it was developed entirely in-house.
“There’s lots of organizations out there that have some pretty decent sized budgets to do their advertising and we’ve done this really low cost because we used all internal City resources,” she said.
The EDAC is Canada’s national organization of economic developers. It has been in existence since 1968.
The EDAC provides its members with professional development and networking opportunities, has an online job board, and holds an annual conference.
