BONJOUR CANADA: A CASE STUDY OF THE 1995-2000 LOUISIANA PUBLIC RELATIONS CAMPAIGN TO ATTRACT CANADIAN VISITORS TO LOUISIANA A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Mass Communication in The Manship School of Mass Communication by Bonnie Anne Bauman B.A., Southeastern Louisiana University, 1997 May 2005TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT....................................................................................................................... iii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................1 2 LITERATURE REVIEW .........................................................................................5 Tourism.....................................................................................................................5 Public Relations and the Travel/Tourism Industry ...................................................6 Cultural Tourism.....................................................................................................19 Summary.................................................................................................................32 3 METHODOLOGY .................................................................................................33 Data Collection Technique .....................................................................................34 Data Analysis..........................................................................................................35 4 BACKGROUND .....................................................................................................36 The Acadian Cajun Connection...............................................................................36 The Acadians of Eastern Canada .............................................................................36 The Cajuns of South Louisiana................................................................................38 5 RESULTS: THE CAMPAIGN................................................................................43 Step One: Opportunity Defined ...............................................................................43 Step Two: Making a Plan.........................................................................................48 Step Three: Action ...................................................................................................55 Step Four: Program Evaluation................................................................................70 6 CONCLUSION........................................................................................................75 REFERENCES ..................................................................................................................90 APPENDIX A INTERVIEW GUIDE ..........................................................................................93 B INTERVIEW #2...................................................................................................95 VITA................................................................................................................................100 iiABSTRACT The research undertaken in this study explores five years of the Louisiana Office of Tourism’s public relations campaign to attract Canadian visitors to Louisiana. The study considers how the campaign’s organizers used the cultural bond between French-speaking Canadians and Louisiana to attract Canadians to Louisiana. The study also examines how important the public relations strategy of highlighting the cultural bond between host and tourist was in attracting Canadian visitors to the state. In addition, the study uncovers whether or not campaign organizers considered the impact their campaign would have on Louisiana’s Cajun citizenry. The research method employed was the case study method. Interviews were conducted with campaign organizers, and a case description was used to organize and analyze the data. The findings of the study show that the campaign’s planners segmented the Canadian market into two distinct demographics, French-speaking Canadians and English-speaking Canadians. In its campaign to attract French-speaking Canadians to the state, highlighting the cultural bond between the two regions was vital to the campaign’s success. The strategy included the hosting of a year-long celebration of the state’s French heritage as well as a mammoth Cajun family reunion and event sponsorships throughout French-speaking Canada. Ultimately, the Louisiana Office of Tourism concluded that its campaign positively impacted the state’s Cajun community, both economically and culturally. For their part, representatives of the Cajun community expressed concern about the campaign. Specifically, they said they believed the way in which Cajuns were sometimes portrayed in the campaign served to perpetuate stereotypes. Lastly, the study iiishows that the campaign jibed with one of the four tourism public relations models developed by prominent tourism public relations scholar, Don Stacks. Stacks translated the four historic models of public relations developed by J. Grunig for application to the tourism industry. The campaign is a clear example of Stacks’ two-way asymmetric model, the research shows. ivCHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION In the late 1700s, thousands of French-speaking Canadians from the province of Acadiana set out for Louisiana after being expelled by British conquerors. Today, more than 200 years later, French-speaking Canadians are again flocking to Louisiana—drawn to the state by a desire to rekindle the bond cemented two centuries ago when the first boatload of their ancestors took refuge on its swampy shores. In 2000 nearly 116,000 Canadians visited Louisiana, up from 78,000 visitors in 1999.1 Since 1995, the Louisiana Office of Tourism (LOT) has deployed an aggressive marketing campaign to attract Canadian visitors to Louisiana. These public relations initiatives have in large part focused on promoting the cultural bond between French-speaking Canadians and the transplanted “Acadians,” who settled in