Nova Scotia Loyal Connecting Nova Scotians to the producers in their community

Nova Scotia Loyal is the Government of Nova Scotia’s buy-local program. It puts a visible identifier, a sticker, tag or decal, on products grown, harvested, crafted or made in the province, and rewards shoppers for choosing them through the loyalty programs they already use.

For two years we worked with the province to design the program alongside Nova Scotians, surveying more than 10,000 residents and running pilots.

What followed was a comprehensive communications and marketing program that positioned Nova Scotia Loyal as a trusted retail signal for buying local.

By the summer of 2024 the name was known, the consultation was over, and the first public launch with product identifiers were about to arrive in stores. What did not yet exist was any reason for a shopper to notice a small blue mark on a jar, or any sense of what it meant.

Which is what led to our 2024-2025 awareness campaign: The Story Behind the Sticker and Look for Local.

The campaign’s job was to make the identifier mean something, across a province where four in ten people live outside its cities, to two audiences at once (the public who would look for the mark and the producers who would apply it), with a media budget that could not be everywhere.

Our strategy had four parts.

1. Lead with community, and keep the economics inside. Early in development the agency put a choice to the client. The campaign could speak in the program’s own language, jobs and dollars retained in the province, or in the language of community. The agency recommended community, with the economic case reserved for government and stakeholders, on the evidence that Nova Scotians would be interested in hearing from their neighbours more than hearing about a government program. The client agreed, and every public-facing execution followed from that decision.

1. Make the identifier the idea. Most of what the program offers a shopper arrives through one small mark on a product. So, the mark became the story: behind every Nova Scotia Loyal sticker is a real producer and a real business, and choosing the product makes the buyer part of it. “Discover the story behind the sticker” closed every asset.

1. Launch the brand, then build behind it. The creative was planned in three steps so the brand could be in market on the program’s launch day: launch creative built on the new identity; then the producer-led Story Behind the Sticker creative on every channel, from social and video through television, connected TV, digital billboards, streaming audio and beyond; then, in the new year, a turn from story to action. An overarching campaign spoke to all Nova Scotians, and a small stakeholder layer on LinkedIn and the business publisher spoke to the producers, retailers and community leaders who could join. Digital budgets were split by population between urban and rural areas so every part of the province saw the work.

1. Built to adjust. No strategy written in early 2024 could have anticipated 2025, and we did not pretend otherwise. We fixed what had to stay constant whatever happened (the identifier, the producers and the address nsloyal.ca) and left the message free to move, with a standing rhythm of reporting and review with the media partner so the campaign could change course on evidence. That design was tested twice: by a provincial election that paused all government advertising for five weeks in the fall, and by newly announced U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods in February 2025. The campaign answered the second within three days, with a new line, Look for Local, and a new job (see Challenges and Solutions).

The campaign delivered above plan on every offline channel, drove half of all traffic to nsloyal.ca, and raised the site’s engagement rate between its first and second flights.