The millions of vehicle passengers and passersby who go about their daily activities in New York, Chicago, and Toronto will be able to appreciate attractive images of beaches, nature, rivers, waterfalls, volcanoes, hanging bridges, and the wide biodiversity that Costa Rica offers. Without a doubt, this is an express invitation to take a break from the stressful routine of those cosmopolitan North American cities and take a break in our country on your next vacation.
Precisely, during January and February, the outdoor advertising campaign of the Costa Rican Tourism Institute (ICT) was activated in the United States and Canada. The initiative is an extension of the “Only The Essentials” campaign and is made up of large format digital screens, large static billboards, as well as cube-shaped and other medium format interactive screens, placed in locations and in terminals public transport with extensive traffic of people and vehicle drivers.
Additionally, the campaign in external media will be complemented with specialized guidelines in digital media such as search engines, social media related to advertising marketing channels in both North American countries, such as Google, Microsoft, Bing, Travel Desk and Expedia, as well as such as social media such as TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram.
Carolina Trejos, ICT Marketing Director, highlighted that this campaign in foreign media is part of the permanent strategic promotion and marketing efforts, developed with the objective of inviting potential tourists with high interest in traveling to Costa Rica (best prospects) to make the final travel decision, through powerful images and powerful messages to live the experience firsthand without anyone explaining it to them, such as “meant to be experienced, not explained”, included in one of the largest billboards.
“On this occasion, we continue to carry out strategic and creative actions, focused on this occasion in New York, Chicago and Toronto, three of the cities that concentrate thousands of our best prospects and that have direct flight connections to Costa Rica. Likewise, we have reinforced the campaign with specialized digital media”, Trejos finished.
The presence of the country brand Essential Costa Rica will look impressive in the heart of Manhattan, in New York, outdoor advertising will be placed on digital and static screens in the west and east center of the city, one of the nerve centers of wide circulation vehicular and walkers in the “Big Apple”.
In the case of the so-called “city of the winds”, the images of Costa Rica will be located on large-format billboards, between Lincoln and Racine avenues, -56 Twin-, a point where precisely 2 of the most important vehicular arteries converge. Chicago highlights.
For its part in Toronto, a digital screen of several meters was selected in the CF TEC Tower, as well as in different interactive screens, located in several columns of Union Station, the main station of the Toronto Subway, the most populous city in Canada. . The presence in said station stands out, of a cube-shaped LED screen with 4 faces that will show commercials with Costa Rican tourist attractions in a 360-degree perspective, designed for those who walk or travel at this point of connection to different cities.
It is worth emphasizing the use of an innovative system, included in the interactive digital screens, equipped with a geo-referencing program that allows commercials and announcements to be sent to the mobile phones of people who visit these interactive media.
High impact with essential precision
According to data shared by the MMGY agency, in charge of executing ICT advertising campaigns in the United States and Canada, impressions -understood as the number of times people will be exposed to a message- will exceed 10 million in New York, approximately 1.8 million in Chicago and 25 million in Toronto.
The United States remains solid as the main source market for tourists to Costa Rica. According to the most recent data from the ICT, in 2022 more than 1,250,000 tourists from that North American country arrived Costa Rica by air. For its part, Canada shows a considerable upturn with the registration of approximately 170,000 travelers who arrived in our country through scheduled flights the previous year. Finally, based on the most recent ICT studies, New York and Chicago concentrate 12% of the total of the best prospects or tourists with high interest in traveling to Costa Rica from the United States, which represents approximately 3.3 million potential travelers. In the case of Toronto, it corresponds to the city with the largest number of “best prospects” with 632,000 people, a figure that constitutes 18.6% of all Canadians interested in visiting Costa Rica soon.
