How Banff Squirrel turned from Internet meme to tourism ambassador
Skift Take
Banff Squirrel says it best himself: “A good approach to Twitter is to have someone at the helm who loves their product.” Being able to convey a personality and passion can define a destination’s brand more than sharing events and pictures.
Destinations might feel lost when considering ways to capitalize on the enormous marketing opportunities available on social media. Twitter and Facebook have given small towns and forgotten places a voice for much less than marketing budgets of New York or Chicago. Getting that voice heard; however, takes creativity.
One Canadian park is an ideal example of success. Banff Lake Louise Tourism, a non-profit marketing organization for local businesses, took a viral image of a squirrel crashing a tourist's photo and turned it into a long-term marketing strategy. Banff Squirrel has since become the face of tourism for the Canadian town and park.
Banff Squirrel turns to Twitter to spread the word on his hometown. He has the 18th most active and 52nd most followed Twitter account of the 240 destinations in SkiftSocial. He sends out an average of 13 tweets every day, actively retweeting and replying to followers. Not bad for a rodent who stumbled into his role.
This January we launched our first data dashboard in beta, SkiftSocial, read more about the launch here, and what it means for social media monitoring in the travel industry.
We emailed with Jeff Mitchell, who describes himself as the Banff Squirrel's closest man friend (and is also the authority's social media manager), to see how the rodent-focused so
