If you live and work in Silicon Valley, you might have seen this billboard, which is a part of a $100,000 campaign led by Canadian tech innovation company Communitech.
Canada’s innovation ecosystem could benefit from U.S. tech workers seeking alternative options. Learn how Canadian startups can access great talent south of the border with Communitech Outposts: https://t.co/YlnA2vePLG pic.twitter.com/V0kewLorHG
— Communitech (@Communitech) August 24, 2020
The idea for the campaign started back in June, when the U.S. announced a suspension of H-1B visas. At that time Shopify’s CEO, Tobi Lutke, tweeted that workers affected by the visa freeze should “consider Canada. Communitech CEO, Iain Klugman went aggressive and has started an OOH campaign that will also include Boston, MA and Austin, TX.
Toronto Life has an interview with Communitech CEO, Here are highlights from the Toronto Life article with Klugman.
So America’s loss could be Canada’s gain?
That is definitely what we are hoping for, and what we are trying to promote with this billboard campaign. Pretty much the day after Trump’s announcement, we started having conversations about what we could do. We knew this was an opportunity we need to take advantage of. The team looked at a few strategies, but decided that in these circumstances, we really wanted to underscore the idea of uncertainty. That’s why we went with this message of “What if?” The billboard shows all of these Google searches: “What if my visa gets cancelled?” “What if I lose my job and health care?” There are plenty of reasons to question some of the policies around immigration over the last four years, but this situation with H-1B visa is cause for specific worry, so we wanted to capitalize on that. It could be a short-term window, and we wanted to make some noise.
Communitech dropped $100,000 on the billboards, which have been up for a couple of weeks now. Have you seen a return on investment?
Absolutely. In terms of the billboards, the goal was to get the attention of the media. Maybe a million people are going to see them in San Francisco, but we felt this was a good way to spark a conversation on social media about opportunities in Canada. That’s the real campaign. A lot of people in our industry have tweeted support. The goal is to get people talking and then to drop them off at Communitech’s landing page, where they can learn more about Canada, see testimonials from tech workers who have moved here and then go to our job board.
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