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Yellowknife NWT versus Yellowknife Mars NWT Tourism aims to capitalize on NASA naming Mars region Yellowknife with photo marketing campaign Thandiwe Vela Northern News Services Published Tuesday, Sept. 4, 2012
And the flight from Edmonton to Yellowknife, Mars? About 7,200 hours. This is just one of the comparisons being made between the city and its new extraterrestrial namesake, as part of a Northwest Territories Tourism campaign launched last week. The Yellowknife Martian for a Day Photo Contest, dubbed Yellowknife NWT vs. Yellowknife Mars, aims to leverage attention from NASA naming the region where Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity landed on the red planet last month, "Yellowknife." "We knew that because of the announcement, that people in the world -- particularly the science community -- were looking at Yellowknife, Northwest Territories and who we are, where we're at, so we wanted to garner some more attention from this," said Brian Desjardins, executive director of NWT Tourism. "We're capitalizing on this, we're not going to let it fade away." Desjardins said through this "fun approach," the marketing campaign asks people to submit photos of depicting either a Yellowknifer on Mars, or a Martian in Yellowknife, NWT. "I think if they do discover intelligent life on Mars, that maybe we would be the first destination to attract them to visit," Desjardins joked. "We're hoping that people will be creative and have some fun with it." A campaign submission from photographer Bill Braden, depicts Yellowknife prospector Walt Humphries, showing a Martian a sample of nearly four-billion-year-old Acasta rock from a claim north of Yellowknife. The submission capitalizes on the NASA scientists decision to select Yellowknife as the name for the now-famous Mars region due to the planet's similarly-ancient geological formations. The Acasta rock, from a claim Humphries once owned, is believed to be among the oldest unchanged substances on the planet. The photo campaign is scheduled to run until Sept. 28, and NWT Tourism will be releasing new comparisons between the two Yellowknife locations through social media websites regularly. NASA naming the area Yellowknife was another gift from the "advertising angels" for the NWT, said Desjardins, after Prince William and his wife Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, choosing Yellowknife as one of the stops on their Canadian visit last year, generated about $15 million worth of free global media coverage. "So for all these things to be happening for us – William and Kate, Ice Pilots, Ice Road Truckers, Arctic Air, and now NASA putting Yellowknife on Mars, I mean, it's just amazing that we're getting all this attention, all this media coverage," Desjardins said. "There must be a marketing God that's looking over the Northwest Territories."
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