Canadian Tourism Commission’s first-ever Instagram FAM (familiarization) trip to Yukon was social-media smash hit

2013-08-30 — /travelprnews.com/ — Instagram has stolen much of the social-media limelight, especially with its recent introduction of 15-second videos. This summer was the perfect moment for the Canadian Tourism Commission (CTC) to use it for the first time as the basis for a nine-day FAM (familiarization) tour that brought four top Instagrammers and a leading videographer to Yukon.

The famous five (Michael Oneal, Paul Octavious, Rebecca Finch, Alex Strohl and Romain Leclerc) explored the territory, which included a glacier tour by helicopter, learning how to pan for gold and the wonders of the summer solstice within the Arctic Circle, connecting with locals along the way. Using the hashtags #Yukon1x1 and #ExploreCanada, their images, videos and stories were a smash hit on Instagram, yielding more than 750,000 “likes” from fellow Instagrammers captivated by their Canadian content.

Travel Yukon teamed up with CTC to support the road trip.

CTC’s new social-media maple-leaf avatar, designed by Vancouver creative whiz Carson Ting (aka Chairman Ting), has garnered much praise. As part of this year’s Canada Day celebrations in Vancouver, BC, the designer created a giant mural of the avatar on a wall at Canada Place. Photos and an Instagram video captured the work during its 12 hours from start to finish, all widely shared on social networks with the #canadamural hashtag.

Photo: @pauloctavious