The West is Wild Campaign

Bow Valley College

Calgary, AB

In January 2022, Bow Valley College (BVC) opened the Centre for Entertainment Arts (CEA), a new training ground for the next generation of 3D animators, visual effects artists and game developers. The problem was there was little to no awareness of the CEA. With no students and no portfolio work to highlight, there was a need for some sort of story to draw people in, both domestically and internationally. The West is Wild campaign leveraged other student portfolio work, showcasing the type of projects and skills the BVC students themselves would learn. The campaign blended the common themes of living in Alberta, such as hiking, wilderness and mountains, and combined them with fantastic scenes of spaceships and lake monsters, taking inspiration from outdoor travel ads. This juxtaposition helped the program stand out from others that leaned mostly on work samples, but were not tied into a larger theme or story. SFX company White Wolfe created the spaceship graphic for the commercial opening, and a complementary video campaign drove strong performance. The overall campaign achieved more than 12M impressions and 82,000 clicks, with a 0.64% CTR.