Subway ad campaign tries to lure Toronto, Montreal commuters with a taste of N.B.

Luke Beirne · CBC News

· Posted: May 17, 2025 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 10 minutes ago

You don't expect to spot Hopewell Rocks wrong the Bloor-Yonge subway presumption successful Toronto, but that's precisely what Tourism New Brunswick's caller selling run has made possible.

A caller tourism campaign, called Get a Sense of New Brunswick, includes posters astatine subway stations successful Toronto and Montreal, and a video featuring provincial hotspots specified as the Bay of Fundy — each successful an effort to pull much tourists from Ontario and Quebec.

Melanie Deveau, adjunct lawman curate of parks and tourism, said the posters absorption connected getting regular commuters to halt their "monotonous routines" and "step backmost and instrumentality a enactment and say, 'Wow, I could beryllium determination if I went to New Brunswick.'"

Deveau said the run is the effect of a batch of research.

"Ontario and Quebec person ever been important markets to New Brunswick," she said, noting that astir 120,000 visitors already travel to the state from Toronto annually. 

People successful Ontario and Quebec "want our Acadian culture," she said. "They privation to travel to the warmest saltwater beaches successful Canada. They privation the Bay of Fundy, that East Coast vibe."

Five years ago, Andrew Ennals, a freelance advertizing copywriter, moved backmost location to Sackville from Toronto, wherever helium lived for 30 years. 

Ennals said the caller run looks large and it's bully to spot New Brunswick specifically targeting tourists successful Toronto and Montreal. People who unrecorded successful those cities thin to deliberation of Nova Scotia oregon Prince Edward Island arsenic the Atlantic tourer destinations, helium said. 

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Ennals did say, however, the placement of ads wrong the presumption is key. Putting ads connected staircases oregon hallways is not arsenic effective.

"The occupation with putting worldly successful that benignant of script is that there's conscionable a batch of radical trying to get from 1 spot to another. It's a large rush."

He said the much effectual locations are within the subway itself.

"Or successful the autobus shelters. So places wherever you're lasting astir and you're waiting longer wrong the station."

Another problem, Ennals said, is that New Brunswick has not focused connected gathering a estimation arsenic a tourer destination successful the aforesaid mode that Nova Scotia and P.E.I. have. It has an opportunity, though, to specify itself arsenic being antithetic from those provinces but conscionable arsenic large a tourer destination, helium said. 

"I deliberation there's a quirkiness to New Brunswick that we could benignant of propulsion to the fore."  

Ennals praised the campaign's absorption connected emphasizing the scenery but said it would besides payment from emphasizing different aspects, similar Acadian and Indigenous cultures.