Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism Spins a Story Worth Chasing
"A Tangled Tale" is a 2019 travel and leisure campaign created by Target for Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism, launched in Canada on January 18, 2019, using a 90-second cinematic film to invite audiences into the province's landscape, people, and living mythology as part of the long-running "Find Yourself" brand platform.
The campaign represents the 18th chapter of the "Find Yourself" platform, as documented by Targetmarketing Ca, marking a continued and deepening investment in narrative as the province's primary competitive tool in the Canadian travel market. Rather than cataloguing attractions, the campaign deploys a rhyming voiceover and images of Newfoundland's south coast to construct the feeling of a place where stories are inseparable from geography. The central 90-second television spot functioned as the anchor of the storytelling effort, supported by 15-second and 30-second executions across an initial eight-week broadcast and online media schedule, later extended to a fifteen-week campaign run, according to Strategyonline Ca.
In Canada, where domestic tourism competition intensifies each planning season, Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism used this campaign to assert a distinct identity built on voice, tradition, and poetic landscape rather than price or convenience. The province's advertising agency of record, Target, is headquartered in St. John's, Newfoundland, making this a collaboration rooted in the same culture it depicts. By March 2019, the campaign expanded into print, with the first executions of a planned fifteen-advertisement print series, per strategyonline.ca, signalling an ambition that extended well beyond a single seasonal push. The campaign sits at a Clapboard Score of 69 out of 100, reflecting its strong creative foundation and measured media ambition within the Canadian travel and leisure advertising category.
Target's strategy for "A Tangled Tale" rests on a clear consumer insight: travellers in Canada are increasingly motivated by emotional authenticity rather than destination checklists. The campaign was designed to position Newfoundland and Labrador not as a list of experiences to complete but as a living story the visitor enters and becomes part of. As reported by strategyonline.ca, Target president and CEO Derek O'Dea stated that the visual storytelling was intended to create an invitation for travellers to generate their own narratives within the province.
The strategic context in Canada supports this approach. Newfoundland and Labrador's 2018 campaigns generated attributed visitor spending of nearly two hundred million dollars, representing a return of approximately thirty-seven dollars in visitor spending per dollar of campaign budget, according to Legnb Ca. These figures reflect the compounding value of consistent brand-platform investment over multiple years, with the "Find Yourself" platform having first established its storytelling register through the 2016 "Colours" campaign, which drew on the province's musical traditions, as documented by targetmarketing.ca.
In the broader Canadian travel market, Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism competes for share of mind and share of itinerary against well-resourced provincial rivals including Destination British Columbia and Tourism Prince Edward Island, both of which operate substantial content-driven marketing programmes. Against this competitive set, Target's decision to anchor the campaign in a rhyming, voiceover-led narrative rather than production spectacle is a deliberate differentiation. The "A Tangled Tale" approach borrows the intimacy of oral tradition — fitting for a province whose culture is defined by it — and translates that intimacy into a thirty-second, sixty-second, and ninety-second architecture capable of working across broadcast and digital channels simultaneously across the Canadian market.
The 90-second film at the heart of "A Tangled Tale" was shot over three fourteen-hour days on Newfoundland's south coast, according to targetmarketing.ca. The production schedule was compressed but deliberate, with the location itself functioning as a primary creative element rather than a backdrop. The south coast of Newfoundland — remote, dramatic, and largely inaccessible by road — lends the film a quality of genuine discovery that no studio substitution could replicate.
Creative direction for the campaign was shared by Tom Murphy and Jason Hill, with art direction credited to Tom Murphy and Kevan Kalyan, copywriting by Dave Sullivan, and strategic planning by Noel O'Dea, as documented by adsoftheworld.com and Little Black Book. Account leadership was provided by Catherine Kelly as director of account management, with Ernie Brake serving as account director and Allison Daley as account manager. The depth of this credit list reflects a campaign built through close cross-functional collaboration between creative, strategy, and client services within Target's St. John's operation.
The defining craft choice in "A Tangled Tale" is the rhyming voiceover, noted by strategyonline.ca as a distinguishing feature of the campaign's reception. In a travel and leisure advertising category dominated by aspirational montage and licensed indie soundtracks, a structured, rhythmic narration is a risk. It demands that the viewer slow down and listen, aligning the audio and visual experience in a way that rewards attention. The print expansion that followed in March 2019, with a planned series of fifteen executions, demonstrates that the creative system was built for longevity — each execution intended to add a new verse to the same ongoing story about Newfoundland and Labrador as a place that generates narrative wherever a visitor looks.
"A Tangled Tale" generated nearly 700,000 YouTube views, according to targetmarketing.ca. For a provincial tourism campaign operating in Canada rather than a global consumer market, this level of organic video engagement reflects meaningful reach beyond the campaign's paid media footprint and signals that the film found an audience willing to seek it out or share it rather than simply encounter it mid-stream.
The broader performance context for Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism's advertising investment is documented in provincial research. The 2018 campaign cycle generated attributed visitor spending that translated to a return of approximately thirty-seven dollars per dollar of campaign budget, according to legnb.ca — a figure that frames "A Tangled Tale," launched in January 2019 as the opening effort of the new campaign year, as part of a demonstrably productive advertising programme. Destination Canada's 2018 marketing activity attracted more than one million additional visitors and generated over one and a half billion dollars in visitor spending, according to Destination Canada's own reporting, establishing the national tailwind within which provincial campaigns like this one operate.
Strategy magazine covered the campaign positively in January 2019, with Chris Powell highlighting the rhyming voiceover, poetic landscapes, and focus on people and place as defining qualities, per strategyonline.ca. No independent brand-lift or conversion data for the specific "A Tangled Tale" execution is publicly available beyond YouTube view count and media coverage. Structurally, however, the campaign's multi-format architecture — spanning 15-second, 30-second, and 90-second film, followed by a fifteen-piece print series — positions it as a system built to accumulate awareness and emotional association across a full travel-planning season in the Canadian market.
"A Tangled Tale" is a 2019 travel campaign by Target for Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism. Launched in Canada on January 18, 2019, it centres on a 90-second film shot on the province's south coast, using a rhyming voiceover and cinematic landscapes to invite travellers into the province's storytelling culture.
Target, a St. John's-based agency, created "A Tangled Tale" for Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism. Creative directors Tom Murphy and Jason Hill led the campaign, with copywriting by Dave Sullivan and strategic planning by Noel O'Dea, as documented by adsoftheworld.com and lbbonline.com.
The "A Tangled Tale" video generated nearly 700,000 YouTube views, according to targetmarketing.ca. For a Canadian provincial tourism campaign, this organic engagement indicates the film reached audiences beyond its paid broadcast and online media schedule, which initially ran for eight weeks across Canada.
"Find Yourself" is Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism's long-running brand platform developed by Target. "A Tangled Tale," launched in January 2019, is the platform's eighteenth chapter, per targetmarketing.ca, extending a storytelling approach first deepened by the 2016 "Colours" campaign, which drew on the province's musical traditions.
"A Tangled Tale" was filmed on Newfoundland's south coast over three fourteen-hour production days, according to targetmarketing.ca. The remote and visually dramatic coastline functions as a central creative element in the 90-second film, reinforcing the campaign's narrative premise that Newfoundland itself is the story.
Following its January 18, 2019 television and online debut, "A Tangled Tale" expanded into print in March 2019 with the first executions of a planned fifteen-advertisement series, per strategyonline.ca. The overall campaign ran across a fifteen-week media schedule using 15-second, 30-second, and 90-second film executions across the Canadian market.
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