The Brief

Destination Canada needed to change how the international meetings industry perceived Canada — moving beyond scenery and hospitality to position the country’s regional innovation hubs as a strategic reason to host business events. They wanted a creative partner who could define the message, produce the storytelling, and reach an audience beyond traditional meetings marketing.

The Approach

I led strategy and execution across a multi-year partnership that evolved through several phases. The centerpiece was “Meet the Innovators,” a content series profiling the researchers, founders, and industry leaders behind Canada’s regional strengths — AI in Edmonton, ocean science in Victoria, sustainable agriculture in PEI, advanced manufacturing in Ottawa. Each piece connected a specific city’s innovation economy to the case for hosting events there. Around the content, I designed speaking engagements, produced thought leadership for industry conferences, and led the creative development of a bilingual “Meet in Canada” marketing brochure — a modular sales piece built for trade shows and C-suite decision makers.

The Outcome

The partnership gave Destination Canada a sustained, credible narrative that connected regional innovation to business events strategy — a positioning that hadn’t existed before. The work spanned content, events, and collateral across multiple years, and became a model for how a national tourism organization could use strategic storytelling to compete for international business.