Aerial view of a boat cruising a river lined with fall colours in Kawarthas Northumberland

Case study · Destination campaign

Eight falls of turning colour into visits.

Since 2018 we’ve run Fall Routes for RTO8 and Kawarthas Northumberland: an annual campaign that puts the region on Ontario’s fall map and sends travellers straight to local businesses.

Client

RTO8 (Kawarthas Northumberland)

Campaign

Fall Routes, every August to November since 2018

Services

Photo & video, web content, paid social & search, print, reporting

Channels

FallRoutes.ca, Meta, Google Ads, Globe and Mail, Ontario By Bike

The need

Fall is short, and every destination wants it.

Every autumn, Ontario destinations compete for the same few weeks of colour. RTO8 wanted Kawarthas Northumberland known as one of the province’s top fall destinations, and wanted that attention to turn into real visits to the region’s farms, trails, marinas and main streets.

Our approach

One campaign home, rebuilt every season.

FallRoutes.ca is the hub. Each season we build out routes and stories for the ways people actually spend a fall weekend here: scenic drives, hiking, paddling, fishing, boating the Trent-Severn, farm visits, corn mazes and pumpkin patches. Every page points visitors to the local businesses that make the trip.

We shoot fresh photo and video across the region, then put it to work in Meta and Google campaigns from mid-August, alongside print in the Globe and Mail and Ontario By Bike.

After each season we report back on what worked and carry it into the next. In 2025 that meant leaning into agritourism, which became the most-visited campaign content on the site.

Woman paddling a canoe on a calm lake toward a shoreline of fall colours Aerial view of a canal town in fall along the Trent-Severn Waterway Mother and toddler with pumpkins on a farm in autumn Friends walking a small-town main street on a sunny fall day Colourful boathouses on a lake surrounded by fall trees Family choosing produce at a farm market stand in fall

Results · Eight seasons, 2018 to 2025

1.19M

website sessions on FallRoutes.ca

157K+

referrals sent directly to partner businesses

3.5×

more visitors in 2024 than in the first year

4.5M

Meta ad impressions across 2024 and 2025

Season by season

FallRoutes.ca sessions, August to November.

Traffic tripled between the first season and the record 2024 campaign. In 2025, sessions came down from that peak, while page views hit a new high as visitors explored more of the site.

86K

2018

77K

2019

96K

2020

75K

2021

166K

2022

219K

2023

257K

2024

211K

2025

Source: FallRoutes.ca website analytics, campaign reports 2018–2025. Partner referrals are clicks from FallRoutes.ca through to local business websites.

Watch · Kawarthas Northumberland

Fall in Kawarthas Northumberland

▶  Watch the film

Have a season worth owning?

Tell us about the time of year your region shines. We’ll show you how to build a campaign around it.