Calgary’s Future
To spread the word of free digital guides on Calgary’s offerings, I was tasked with designing a variety of ads that would catch the eye of a wide audience.
Role
Graphic Designer
Illustrator
Agency
Point Blank
Client
Calgary’s Future
Date
April 2025
Set 1
This set heavily featured CF’s mascot Reframe while emphasizing a huge selling point of this campaign; the guide is free! Out of all the sets, this one ended up performing the best which was great since the buttons were slightly experimental. Since we had 3 other sets running, I played with pointing the on-graphic button to the location of the actual CTA on Meta’s paid ad layout. That curiosity paid off!
Set 2
With the cuteness of the first set, I asked myself “who wouldn’t like those and what would they prefer?” The answer was chaos. I chose a more alternative and overwhelming approach for this set to really shove the content in the viewer’s face. Anything to pause that scroll!
Set 3
Here I used the actual covers of the Affordability Guide and the Recreation Guide in the context of a phone to give the viewer immediate context. Again, the free appeal was emphasized but the focus was more on the simple text. We also opted to not have a button on these ones to give it a more organic feel though it would be framed with the paid ad UI.
Set 4
Whereas the other three sets focused on both versions of the guide (Affordability and Recreation) this one only tackled the Recreation guide which had three sections within it. The covers of those three sections were fanned out to give a sneak peak of the content and provide a photographic ad option.
Learning Outcomes
Not every client will have the funds or the flexibility to allow for multiple sets of paid ads but I truly believe it’s the best way to cast a wide net online. Designers make assumptions about what people of a certain gender, age range, or tax bracket would like but that will always be general unless your product is super niche. These ads were meant to reach as many Calgarians as possible, so a smattering of options was the best approach. The performance metrics were super enlightening and I’ll definitely be pushing for this strategy in the future.