Invest Vancouver is the Metro Vancouver region's economic development leadership service, created to advance equitable opportunity and more broadly shared prosperity for all residents of the region. In November 2021, Invest Vancouver researched and published "Clean Transportation: Findings and Actions to Strengthen the Sector in the Metro Vancouver region". The report underscored that Metro Vancouver is well-positioned to lead the next global wave of clean transportation innovation, development, and commercialization, but risk losing significant parts of this export industry, including some of its fastest growing and most successful firms, if barriers to investment and future industry growth are not urgently addressed.
To shine a light on this emerging cluster in the region and to proactively create opportunities for investment and industry growth, Invest Vancouver successfully sought proclamation of Clean Transportation Month from the regional and provincial government. The month of June became Clean Transportation Month, making the sector a focus for both residents and decision-makers. Invest Vancouver brought together partners to celebrate and learn about the industry strengths that exist in the region and to collectively promote several related events that took place in June, including:
- HUB Spring Go by Bike Week
- Vancouver Maritime Centre for Climate's Green Shipping Corridors
- Car Free Day Surrey
- TransLink's New Mobility Forum
- Vancouver Entrepreneurs Forum's Clean Transportation event
- Motivate Vancouver
Invest Vancouver also organized North America's first ever next-generation transportation investment conference. Motivate Vancouver supported strategic investment by bringing together emerging firms together with prominent "buy-side" global investors to create new capital formation and access opportunities. It brought together 240+ registered attendees from start-ups, early-stage companies, investors and multinational companies to discuss innovation in the field and promote the region's clean tech sector to a global audience. The event also included a look into Invest Vancouver's report and policy recommendations on how to remove barriers to industry growth. The event was over-subscribed, featuring representation from 22 VCs representing approximately $6 billion dollars in capital.
At the end of the event, Invest Vancouver received overwhelmingly positive feedback from industry to repeat the Clean Transportation proclamations, and for the expansion of Motivate Vancouver. Going forward in 2023, the activities are due to be repeated, and Motivate is slated to be expanded into a multi-day event.
Invest Vancouver set out to maximize the impact of this project by collaborating with two levels of government and various partner organizations, to promote the Clean Transportation industry in the region during June 2022, designated as Clean Transportation Month.
In order to analyze the impact of the project, Invest Vancouver tracked full details of KPIs and Metrics for each of the listed goals.
GOAL 1: Promote the Metro Vancouver region's Clean Transportation industry to local and global audiences, especially to those who might otherwise be unaware. Through an effort by Invest Vancouver, two levels of government - both regional and provincial - proclaimed June to be Clean Transportation Month, pushing this industry and its priorities to the top of the agenda of key decision-makers. Core metrics related to this goal included: 14,500+ impressions of Invest Vancouver social media posts, 740 engagements for Invest Vancouver social media posts, and 197 page views for the event Landing Page.
GOAL 2: Build genuine and reciprocal relationships with partner organizations. Invest Vancouver has been a guiding coalition by successfully rallying various partners to hold events within the month of June, all focused on various aspects of the sector. The events were over-subscribed and attended by investors, industry members, association leaders, and policy makers. Core metrics related to this goal included: four direct partner organizations (HUB, VMCC, TransLink, Vancouver Entrepreneurs' Forum), and two new formal partnerships with Clean Transportation Month partner organizations in the seven months since June 2022.
GOAL 3: Increase public awareness of Invest Vancouver's Clean Transportation research and the Motivate Vancouver event. Invest Vancouver's Clean Transportation Report was prominently featured throughout the month. The report, produced through research and comprehensive interviews with the executives of clean tech firms, filled a void by presenting sector-specific data and providing actionable intelligence previously overlooked. Additionally, the Motivate Vancouver event received extensive coverage throughout social media from thought-leaders and innovations. That included promotion and posts from Canada's International Development Minister and BC's Energy Minister. Coverage of Motivate Vancouver reached more than 100,000 accounts, with more than 30,000 direct impressions. 240+ registrations for Motivate Vancouver, a 38% increase in followers on LinkedIn; 27% increase in follows on Twitter (June 1, 2022 - July 7, 2022), and 150+ hits for Clean Transportation research documents (report, executive summary and sector profile) in June 2022.
At Motivate Vancouver, in addition to introducing pitch companies to global investors, local companies were able to gain direct access to many of the venture capital firms in attendance. Most recently, one of the companies to pitch was recognizes on the Forbes 30 under 30 list of start-ups. The relationships made at Motivate Vancouver 2022 will continue to be strengthened in future years.
To that end, Invest Vancouver is actively working to expand Motivate Vancouver 2023, working in conjunction with partners such as TransLink and Helijet, and will be seeking regional and provincial proclamations again.
Metro Vancouver's clean transportation sector is buoyed by world-renowned research institutions and universities, sector specific accelerators, and a supporting inventive and regulatory environment. Working across the ecosystem to shine a spotlight on the incredible innovations and initiatives in our region will serve to support both investment attraction and economic development opportunities.
This project can be adapted for use in other communities at the regional and/or local level. Core to the success of this initiative was leveraging Invest Vancouver's role as a convener to bring together partners from government, industry and industry associations to discuss how to best propel Clean Transportation - one of the region's key sectors.
We had a high rate of engagement and participation across activities because we gained the trust of ecosystem partners by connecting with them in the research phase. Starting with research provided a data-driven roadmap regarding how to move the sector forward and added credibility to our asks for involvement and participation in our various marketing efforts.
Regarding opportunities to improve going forward, a key learning from this project is that month-long proclamations are hard to achieve given they may run up against competing proclamations. Seeking week-long proclamations may be equally or more effective given they will be more targeted.
This method can be replicated to account for any other sector and can be transferred to any other municipality for similar use.