Destination Winnipeg is boldly going where no other recruitment campaign from Manitoba has gone before.

The province’s economic development and tourism services agency has set its sights on the nearly two million people in the southern Ontario cities of Hamilton, St. Catharine’s, Windsor, Oshawa and Niagara hit hard by the free-falling automotive sector.

Using print and web advertisements in local newspapers, the “Find Your Place Here” campaign features five reasons to move to Winnipeg: it’s poised to be one of the best performing cities in terms of GDP growth in 2009; cottage country is only an hour or so away in any direction; short commutes mean more family time; the city’s housing stock is among the most affordable in the country; and the arts scene is arguably the most vibrant and diverse across Canada.

What’s unique about this effort is that it isn’t going after ex-patriate Winnipeggers with a pitch thinly disguised as a guilt trip. Instead, the target is people in communities who might not know much about Winnipeg. (Most ex-Winnipeggers tend to congregate in Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary.)

Stu Duncan, Destination Winnipeg’s president, says the campaign is purposely avoiding Toronto. “It’s about awareness of our city, and for people to consider looking here for living and working opportunities,” he says. “Winnipeg isn’t known as much [as it is in Toronto]. We find that when people find out more about Winnipeg or visit here, their attitude toward the city is quite positive. If some people move here because of the campaign, that will be fantastic.”

The campaign also isn’t afraid to have a little fun. Leading the online charge is a website called incrediblycool.ca. In addition to posting news stories about various events and developments in the city, it also has links to companies in the information technology, management, health care, construction and aerospace sectors that are hiring.

There are also videos that you simply won’t find anywhere else. One of them, entitled “Does Winnipeg Really Exist” and a follow up, called “OK, Maybe Winnipeg Exists,” feature references to the city in movies and on television shows such as Get Smart, The Simpsons and the Sopranos.

Webmaster and creator Dougald Lamont says he wanted to create viral videos that people would forward to their friends or post on their Facebook pages. Mission accomplished: the first one has had more than 50,000 hits on YouTube, dwarfing the traffic on the Spirit Energy website, the disastrous multi-million-dollar branding campaign launched by the province two years ago.

“The Winnipeg movie and television references,” says Lamont, “are a statement that the place we live in matters.”

Another video is a high-speed trip down the world’s longest skating trail taken by Lamont, who duct taped a video camera to his helmet and rode his mountain bike on the more than nine-kilometer-long trail along the Assiniboine River that borders the city, from The Forks to Assiniboine Park.

He got the idea for the video, which is time-lapsed down to less than four minutes, because he used to walk along the river-front trail when he worked downtown. “It’s a totally different experience of Winnipeg,” he says. “It’s awesome. The whole city looks so different from the river. All these buildings are designed to face the river. Not seeing it is like spending your entire life in back lanes.”

The videos will keep on coming, too. Lamont plans to add a couple of summer productions featuring attractions such as the boardwalk at nearby Grand Beach, the automobile-free community of Victoria Beach and the Icelandic town of Gimli. IE