Markets 
Passengers at a downtown Toronto subway station have recently been greeted by a pop of Calgary-coded colours as part of a new effort to encourage visitors to the city.
Although TMU station isn’t where Laura Carwardine typically gets off the train, the palette prompted a detour in her commute to get a closer look.
“I was pleasantly surprised to see they had done a takeover of the entire station with an extensive colour palette and a series of Calgary references,” she told Global News in an interview Wednesday.
Those references in big bold letters on top of the solid colour backdrops included phrases like “Friendliest City In the World Yellow,” “Mmm, Ginger Beef Red,” and “Two-Stepping Denim Blue” on each and every ad space in the station.
The colourful campaign hit home for Carwardine, she said, as the local designer is originally from Calgary. She took a video of the display which has since garnered nearly 90,000 views on social media.
“It’s very related to the way that I think about photography anyway, to the point where I was like, ‘Who else is this campaign for other than just me?’” she joked. “Just happy to bring visibility to it because I think it’s a cool concept.”
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That concept is part of a six-week ad campaign by Tourism Calgary entitled the “Colours of Calgary“; at more than $500,000, it’s one of the largest campaigns the organization has ever done.
Jeff Hessel, Tourism Calgary’s senior vice-president of marketing and destination development, noted it’s part of a multi-year push to attract more visitors from Ontario.
“There’s a lot of people there that travelled more, travelled longer, spent more in their destinations, and there’s a lot of people in Toronto that have been showing interest in Calgary,” he said. “But, they don’t really know who we are.”
According to Hessel, the campaign was meant to showcase more of what the “Blue Sky City,” as it’s known, has to offer, with Torontonians’ awareness of the Calgary Stampede and the Rocky Mountains.
The campaign uses the colour palettes to tell the stories of the “dynamic nature” of Calgary, Hessel said, with references to local craft breweries as well as its signature sunshine, food scene and local parks.
“The main objective of this campaign was to build awareness that Calgary is a great urban destination in Canada, which people in Toronto don’t know that,” Hessel told Global News. “We’ve had great hits on the website, we saw three times the amount of people from Toronto on the website.”
It follows an 8.5-per cent increase in tourism spending in Calgary from Ontario in 2025, a boost equated to $22 million, after advertising campaigns last year.
A free trip to Calgary was the grand prize, which has since been awarded.
When asked about the campaign Wednesday, Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas said he was in support of the effort.
“I’m a strong supporter of these guerilla marketing tactics,” he said. “Having Calgary on the map for events, not just like the Stampede, but also year-round, is the way to be able to prove our economy is successful.”
Tourism officials will be back in Toronto this fall with another campaign aimed at winter events in the city.
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