Andris Pone is a Toronto based brand strategy consultant.
These TV spots are beautifully shot. The extraordinary experiences captured certainly justify the incredulity of the words that flash on the screen midway through: “Where is this?” The point-of-view camera work underscores these
experiences as personal and unique and therefore, as something we want to do, too.
Yet the campaign is confusing. “Locals Know,” the line ending each ad, seems irrelevant and blunts my budding curiosity about “Where is this?” The ads are supposed to get Canadians exploring new places inside Canada, yet the exciting aspect of the supporting Web site, localsknow.ca, is uploading our pictures of local places we’ve already been. I know that the CTC wants us also to explore pictures posted by others, and then to visit the places depicted. But any honest user of a site like Facebook will tell you that posting and looking at your own pictures is a lot more fun.
National Post
June 19, 2009