As you probably have read in past articles, the JCTA has run a social media campaign every year for the past 5 years promoting the industry. The campaigns have evolved to better educate and enlighten Canadian consumer about sunshine and the use of sunbeds responsibly. The JCTA main message has always been “Please Tan Responsibly” and to help Canadians find a professional member salon near them and show Canadians that JCTA member salons adhere to a set of Professional Standards to protect them. The starting point of these Standards: All staff must be industry certified as recommended by Health Canada, like the Canadian version of Smart Tan’s UV Tanning Certification. This is the only approved training program by all insurance companies in Canada as well.

The campaign this year was larger and was made up of a number programs. The main part consisted of PreTan, Lifestyle, Sunburn Prevention, Sunless, promoting research and educational videos. We used Facebook for ads and giveaways along with Google AdWords to promote the segments of the campaign.

The campaign was checked weekly for relevance and changed when needed. This kept the ads fresh and sharable. Facebook, this year changed up how ads are shown or used. So dual ads where created for both females and males this year. This actually helped us control our audience. We did have a problem in mid-January when our ads were turned off by accident, as you can see in the website traffic chart below. We promoted heavily on reducing your risk of sunburning on holidays this year, both in the PreTan and Sunburn Prevention programs. We made sure some of our campaigns countered other negative campaigns, so we wouldn’t see a lot of media. Not only did we drive Canadians to our consumer site, but we also helped them find other sites to be better informed. If you do any Google searches like what the JCTA does daily, you’d find that Canada got very little media attention when it came to sunbeds this year. This was not the case in other countries.

Now for the numbers: With all the programs combined, we had a reach of 3.2 million in Canada. We were sending, at the peak, 1100 and, at the end, 400 Canadians a day to our consumer site – see chart below. As you can see, this was all in the peak season. It’s too bad we don’t have funds to do this year-round; we just need some more members. We also increased our followers on Tan Nation to almost 22,000.

We helped double an advocate’s site’s followers and had 27,000 Canadian clicks in to that site. In 2 years, we added 50% more followers to this positive information site. This is just some of the added marketing we’ve been doing.

Canadians going to TanResponsibly.ca

With all this traffic to our consumer site, more Canadians were seeing salon member locations, and those consumers were able to click in to the salon’s website or Facebook page to get further information about that salon.

With a few extra dollars this year, we were able to purchase Dr. Marc Sorenson and Dr. William Grant’s new book “Embrace the Sun” for every JCTA member. If you ever wanted to know about everything on sunlight and sunbeds (and not read research), this is the most complete layman terms book I’ve read. Embrace the Sun presents information from over 1,200 research papers that show regular sun may prolong your life and reduce your likelihood of disease. What is this research? Why does my doctor not know it? Why has our culture had such an about-face on the sun and sunbeds? Is the sun really a demon? Drs. Sorenson and Grant answer these questions and more in Embrace the Sun. The book will be shipped to members in the next few months. You’ll also be able to purchase the book from Uvalux or Tanning Depot at a reduced price of $19.95, instead of the cover price of $26.95 US. Part of the proceeds from the sale of the books will be donated to fund research and advocacy work.

This has been a year of research showing the benefits of UV light far beyond vitamin D and that sunbeds can be a surrogate for the sun when used in moderation. Also, there’s some great news out of Europe with 2 rebuttal research papers on sunlight and sunbeds. I don’t know about you, but talking with people today, there seems to be an interest in sunbeds again. Canadians want to hear our side again. I was listening to a radio interview in June and the radio personality said something like, “If it’s natural, we believe it to be, in general, good for us (sunlight). If it’s manmade, you need to prove it’s good for you.” This is what the JCTA has been doing for the Canadian sunbathing community — doing the research. It takes years and funding to make this happen.

Please become a member of the JCTA, and let’s show governments, the media and our opponents we are in control.

Have a great summer!!