Canada’s Walk of Fame is a national not-for-profit organization that inspires all Canadians by shining a light on extraordinary Canadian achievers and their successes.
They recognize the significant impact of Canadian accomplishments and provide the foremost national platform to celebrate these achievements.
On Dec. 2, 2023, Canada’s Walk of Fame held its 25th Anniversary Celebration event at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. The black-tie event featured an impressive array of Canadian achievers, including those who were inducted, among them Connor McDavid, Avril Lavigne, Victor Garber, the Honourable Rosalee Silberman Abella, and more.
The Challenge
As 2023 represented Canada’s Walk of Fame’s 25th year, it presented both a set of challenges and opportunities for the 25th Anniversary Celebration Event: how to make the event truly memorable and how to use it to propel the growth of Canada’s Walk of Fame and their digital channels.
The challenges:
- Generate interest and excitement for the 25th Anniversary event
- Profile key partners and sponsors
- Leverage the event as a platform for growing Canada’s Walk of Fame social followings
- Use Canada’s Walk of Fame social channels to deliver on their mission to mean more to more people, more often
The CM2 Plan
The CM2 team spent months planning and developing the strategies to bring the event to life and played an active role in Canada’s Walk of Fame’s overall execution team, including their leadership, PR, Events Management, and more.
- Deploy an events team to capture all the amazing moment thorughout the event, including:
- Red Carpet interview team, featuring popular television host and social media influencer, Nicole Servinis
- Crowd team capturing moments across the event, including plaque unveilings, behind-the-scenes action, and more
- Feature sponsors in ways that bring their products to life at the event
- Conduct interviews with current and past Inductees, Honourees, presenters, and special guests as part of the Candid Campfire series.
- Candid Campfire
The Candid Campfire interview series was conceived to enable Canada’s Walk of Fame to capture and curate their own library of interviews with extraordinary Canadians, whereas previously Canada’s Walk of Fame would simply provide a platform for 3rd party media to do this.
The concept behind Candid Campfire is to set the stage for having conversations in the most Canadian of environments: the cottage. The sets feature images of docks at the lake, ski villages, and comfortable couches within cabin settings. The name evokes an image of sitting around a campfire up north where fun, engaging…and candid conversations happen.
As part of the 25th Anniversary Celebration, Air Canada was brought on as a sponsor of the Candid Campfire series
Our plan began with the branding and content strategy execution. Our team facilitated several brand workshop sessions and interviews with employees and other key stakeholders. With that, our designers produced logo variations for the Canada’s Walk of Fame team to choose from and this process resulted in landing the icon new Canada’s Walk of Fame logo, 20th Anniversary logos, a full brand standards guide, a brand blueprint and content plan.
For the website, our team produced a clean, modern app-like design that is mobile friendly and easy to navigate. Canada’s Walk of Fame events, media, galleries, promotions and information are provided with an intuitive, User Experience first approach.
The social media plan kicked into gear with the Canada’s Walk of Fame 20th Anniversary Awards Show and Gala. CM2 Media fielded 3 separate video teams to gather interview footage, backstage shots and captured several incredible, moving moments. Since then, our team has been present at most Canada’s Walk of Fame events since, capturing more footage to tell the story of Canadian Excellence.
The Results
Challenge 1: Drive interest and excitement for the 25th Anniversary event
As an event, the 25th Anniversary Celebration was stellar. And to help hype the event, CM2 deployed social media strategy to build awareness and excitement in the weeks leading up to the event. Using the prior years Induction Awards event for comparison, CWOF’s website traffic experienced a tremendous spike from Nov 1 – Dec 31 and more than doubled vs the same period last year (on key metrics).
Pageview Volume Comparison (vs 2022)
- 2023 25th Anniversary Event: 97,556
- 2022 Induction Awards Event: 48,305
Challenge 2: Profile key partners and sponsors
CWOF partners have received – and are continuing to receive – extraordinary exposure and goodwill through their participation in the 25th Anniversary Celebration. This exposure goes beyond logo recognition – but to full integration into the event and the subsequent digital coverage that has followed.
Challenge 3: Leverage the event as a platform for growing CWOFs social followings
The impact of this incredible event helped propel CWOFs digital presence into a new level of reach and engagement. In addition, the quality of the content that was generated will continue to help grow CWOFs brand well into 2024.
A new tier of social reach, engagement, and value. CWOFs digital impact as a result of the 2023 Celebration event is generating metrics at a whole new level…
- 2.6 Million combined social media engagements
- 1.5 Million combined social media impressions
- 12% Increase in Instagram followers (in under 2 months)
- $330,000 in approximate paid media value
Challenge 4: Use CWOF’s social channels to help deliver on their mission to mean more to more people, more often
The Candid Campfire concept has become a platform where CWOF can engage with Canadian luminaries in a playful, earnest, and engaging way. It’s a means for documenting the achievements, the attitudes and the personalities of Canada’s leading figures for all to enjoy. The quality and number of interviews conducted have set a new benchmark for CWOF. The Candid Campfire set, presented by Air Canada represented a point of interest for the attendees and added to the electric atmosphere of the event. The massive amount of content gathered will continue to be shared well into 2024 and beyond.
- 2 Candid Campfire sets: For groups and individuals
- 22 Separate Candid Campfire Interviews
- Dozens of Red Carpet interviews and moments
Reflections on this project
What started out as a call for a new logo and branding has turned out to be a long-standing relationship between Canada’s Walk of Fame and CM2 Media. The team at CWOF have been terrific partners. They welcome and encourage new ideas and are always looking ahead to bigger and brighter opportunities.