Discover Saint John’s ‘Hula’ Mural In Running For Award Won By The Oprah Magazine
SAINT JOHN – The large mural of a woman painted last summer by world-famous artist Sean Yoro (known as Hula) is mostly gone from the Saint John waterfront, but it has made an indelible impression on the judges for an international cruise industry awards event in September.
If you were a passenger on a cruise ship that docked in Saint John last year, you would have seen a large mural of a woman reaching out of the water. At low tide her face and outstretched arms were visible; at high tide, only her fingertips could be seen reaching up out of the water.
The mural designed to capture the interest of visiting tourists has now received recognition from the Seatrade Cruise Awards, which has made the Discover Saint John project one of three shortlisted for the Marketing Initiative of the Year.
Victoria Clarke, executive director of Discover Saint John, says the organization is thrilled with the nomination because they knew from the start they had created something of global significance in the industry.
“It was a marketing stunt. It was a piece of performance art demonstrating the urban experience of the highest tides on the planet,” said Clarke in an interview with Huddle. “We thought it was a unique way to do it and to see it shortlisted for an award like this says that we’re not the only ones who thought it was an extraordinary project.”
Saint John is up against some industry heavy-hitters for the award. Capital Cruising, the operator for the cruise industry in London, England, and Edinburgh, Scotland, and the Department of Culture and Tourism in Abu Dhabi in the United Araba Emirates (UAE) are the two other nominees. The winner will be selected at an event September 19 in Lisbon, Portugal.
Charlotte Thornton, Senior Marketing Executive for Seatrade, says the judging panel was looking for exceptional cruise-related marketing initiatives that delivered tangible results.
“This was an extremely competitive year – and making the shortlist is a fantastic testimony to the success of Discover Saint John’s Marketing strategy for cruise tourism,” said Thornton in an e-mail to Huddle.
There was a high-profile winner in the marketing category last year. O, The Oprah Magazine and Holland America line won for a cruise vacation designed by editors of the magazine.
Discover Saint John commissioned the mural because of Hula’s global reach and reputation. He has 240,000 followers on Instagram, and Clarke says these are the kinds of things you need to draw attention to the city and its unique assets.
“It’s an excellent marketing piece for [the cruise industry here] because one of the stories they tell about coming into our port and what makes it so unique globally is the 28-foot change in tides, twice a day, every day,” said Clarke.
“Our director of marketing and communications, Jillian MacKinnon, had originally seen a Sean Yoro painting on an iceberg and it was on the front cover of CNN.com and our lofty, audacious goal was to see our project on the front page of CNN.com and we accomplished that.”
CNN: The Murals That Disappear
Born and raised in Hawaii and now living in Los Angeles, Hula, who has painted murals on rock faces alongside waterfalls and on trees in remote forests, took a week to paint the mural last August. The fingertips are all that remain because they are above the hightide water-line.
Clarke says they knew the mural would be temporary in nature, but that it would live on in videos and photography that could be shared in social media.
She says they’ve tracked more than 25-million views in the year since they mural was done. “It will last online as long as we tell the story online,” she says.
Clarke says Discover Saint John will continue to generate ideas like this to attract attention to the city and the province.
“We are an out of the way destination,” she said. “We need to do things that are out of the box. We need to be telling stories in a unique way about our unique assets to get up above the noise.”