When Travel Yukon tackles the challenge of selling its home as a travel destination, the organization knows what it’s working against.

Potential visitors often don’t know what there is to do there, how to get there or how much it would cost. When most people think about the Yukon, they think of the northern lights, the cold and the wilderness. But a new tourism campaign for Yukon is playing off of its rugged perception as a difficult place to be in the winter, and showing off its more modern offerings.

The campaign uses the idea that there isn’t much to do in Yukon in the winter, and that it’s thought of as a remote and reserved place fit only for brave hardcore survivalists to its benefit. “The Yukon: It’s a Little Bit Metal.” campaign seeks to evoke ideas of metal subculture and “being metal” as a positive attribute, and to show that travellers to Yukon only need to be a little metal to enjoy the winter there.

Travel Yukon developed the new campaign with Cossette, supported by Aasman Design, combining crunchy metal guitar riffs with lyrics highlighting the modern comforts available in Yukon. “The Yukon” campaign launched with a full track available on Spotify, as well as a full music video on digital, a TV spot set for the Juno awards, as well as paid and organic social. The campaign runs until the end of March.

The idea behind the campaign comes from Travel Yukon’s work over time to offer energetic, offbeat creative that can surprise its audience about the destination it’s promoting.

Cossette and Travel Yukon also noticed that many Canadian jurisdictions use a similar style for their tourism ads including beautiful vistas, smiling faces, emotional music and a slower rhythm. The two groups felt this new campaign would feel distinctive and disruptive by comparison.

“We didn’t just need to reframe the perception of the Yukon in winter – we wanted a campaign that stood out from conventional tourism ads, breaking away from the slow pans across beautiful vistas,” Cossette Vancouver’s associate creative director Michael Pal says. “Leaning into ‘being metal’ gave the team the opportunity to do something bold, playful and completely different for the category.”

In 2021, it launched the colourful “Different World” campaign that was created to urge travellers to visit the territory as the world was opening up to travel again after the pandemic. Since then, Travel Yukon has also launched mini-campaigns to support its main “Different World” platform.

Initially, the organization shied away from the “Yukon is Metal” campaign concept, worrying that it would confirm negative preconceived ideas of the territory as being too harsh and extreme. But a revised concept saying that the Yukon is only a little bit metal, while highlighting its modern comforts, presented a fun opportunity to showcase it as a travel destination.

Cossette wrote the lyrics to the campaign’s song and worked with the Canadian rock band Mob Machine to compose and record it. The brand added that it hopes the campaign has great viral potential to find an audience on platforms like Spotify and TikTok.

The campaign is targeting travellers from British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario, aged 30 to 65, who are looking for visits to the wilderness. It’s also using metal to evoke a feeling of nostalgia for older potential travellers.

Cossette and Aasman developed the video and creative concept for the campaign, while Jungle Media handled the media buy.