What better way to engage people than through invested interest? When it comes to digital engagement, the leading way to ask for that invested interest is through crowdfunding. At the core of this campaign was an attempt to raise awareness for the Canadian Badlands by trying to crowdfund $2 trillion in 60 days.

For years, tourism businesses in the Canadian Badlands contributed to Travel Alberta and never really saw the return. When a TV spot was shot it would show skiers swishing down snowcapped mountains. Print ads and digital pieces illustrated the vibrant nightlife of Calgary or Edmonton. The focus never shifted to southeastern Alberta, and so it started its own tourism board. Two years later, a positioning was born for the Canadian Badlands stating it is “A Little Bit Out There,” with several pieces focusing on the quirky attractions, strange ghost towns and the colourful characters found in the Badlands. And, of course, there’s a town in the Canadian Badlands called Vulcan.

Each year, Vulcan hosts Spock Days as a Star Trek festival – the connection being Vulcan is Spock’s home planet. While fans do travel to Vulcan for this festival, the attendance is quite modest. The team felt there was a much bigger opportunity to tell the world about the Canadian Badlands through the story of Vulcan. But there was a bigger problem. The tourism board for the Canadian Badlands didn’t have much money for general awareness.

The answer was to combine the popularity of Star Trek with the crowdsourcing of Indiegogo to raise $2 trillion to build the USS Enterprise in Vulcan, Alberta. While Indiegogo was the hub of the project, its success wouldn’t be measured in the amount of money raised, but rather the media impressions it garnered for the Canadian Badlands and Vulcan over the two months. To do this, the public relations strategy had to be digitally engaging as well.

As soon as the crowdfunding page went live, the team would post to Reddit, Twitter, Star Trek forums and blogs, along with sci-fi and pop culture blogs. The users on Reddit latched on quickly. In the first few days, there were hundreds of upvotes and piles of comments. There was excitement, questions, some well-founded skepticism and even a few legitimate warnings about proper engineering practices when constructing a warp drive. The momentum grew with the thread toppling more than 1,000 upvotes and 187 comments.

When new people arrived at the Indiegogo page, they were met with a wealth of entertaining information. The pitch video proudly displayed the Canadian Badlands as the perfect place to host the USS Enterprise. In the YouTube video, fans and several Star Trek actors pledged their commitment to the goal – giving it some star power. And 67% of the viewers watched the entire two-minute video.

The Indiegogo page also presented new research, CAD-like blueprints about warp drives and timelines to prove the thoughtfulness of the project. And if potential investors needed a more recognized authority, NASA-based video links to modern theories on space travel were added.

Around the same time, the press release hit the mainstream news media. More than 120 national and international newspapers, TV channels and websites carried the story. A modest estimation of the campaign shows more than 716 million media impressions were made, while other estimates believe it may have been closer to 1 billion. This attention sent traffic from 85 different countries to the Indiegogo page. Admittedly, the campaign did not raise $2 trillion but it was deemed a success by engaging the world with the town of Vulcan.