hullo Adventure Club
A speculative family marketing concept exploring how Hullo could turn destination-led travel marketing into an ongoing relationship with Nanaimo families.
4–5 min read.
Concept note:
This is a speculative marketing idea based on publicly available information. I’ve intentionally kept it focused on the opportunity and concept rather than building a full business case without access to Hullo’s internal customer, ridership, capacity and financial data. Those inputs would ultimately shape the audience, pilot, economics and measurement. Concept visuals include AI-assisted mockups created to help communicate the idea.
01 — The Opportunity
How do we create more reasons to travel?
Hullo already does more than sell transportation.
Late-night sailings make concerts and games easier to attend. Travel packages turn the ferry into part of a larger experience. Partnerships, destination content and promotions create more reasons to make the trip.
There is an opportunity to take that same thinking and build it around one specific audience: Nanaimo families.
For families on the Island, Vancouver offers sports, museums, festivals, seasonal events, shopping and experiences that can be reached without bringing a car.
The opportunity is to help Hullo participate earlier in that decision.
The hypothesis:
If Hullo can influence what families decide to do, it can potentially influence when and how often they travel.
Adventure Club is one way to test that.
02 — The Concept
Meet hullo Adventure Club.
A free, opt-in family club for Nanaimo households with kids roughly 6–12, centred around a quarterly printed activity publication designed to inspire play, discovery and family trips.
Parents join through their Hullo account.
The membership belongs to the parent.
The experience belongs to the child.
Each seasonal issue could include:
Games and puzzles
Vancouver events and trip ideas
Things to discover around the city
Scavenger hunts and challenges
Onboard activities
Collectibles and rewards
The publication gives kids something that feels like it belongs to them while giving parents useful ideas for what the family could do next.
03 — Create the Reason
Promote things worth sailing for.
The editorial strategy should focus less on promoting sailings and more on promoting things worth sailing for.
A Canucks game.
A new Science World exhibition.
A Christmas market.
A festival.
A family day downtown.
A seasonal scavenger hunt.
A neighbourhood worth exploring.
Instead of only asking:
When are you travelling next?
Hullo can help families answer:
What should we do next?
Adventure Club becomes a recurring source of inspiration, with Hullo naturally positioned as part of getting there.
04 — Why Physical?
Print is the anchor. Digital completes the journey.
.The printed publication creates presence.
It can sit on the kitchen table, get picked up more than once, move between siblings and become something a family works through together.
It also gives parents something increasingly uncommon: a screen-free activity built around the kinds of puzzles, activity books and printed games many grew up with themselves.
Nostalgia creates the entry point.
The kids create the new memory.
Digital then handles what print should not.
QR codes can connect families to:
Current event information
Member offers
Reward redemption
Trip planning
Hullo booking
The issue provides the inspiration.
Digital turns that inspiration into action.
05 — From Idea to Pilot
Start small. Make it measurable.
Adventure Club does not need to launch as a large loyalty program.
The first version could be a focused pilot built around one clear audience, one seasonal issue and a measurable journey from sign-up to travel.
Acquire
Invite families to join through channels Hullo already controls:
Onboard TV
Introduce Adventure Club after the safety messaging, while families are already experiencing Hullo.Table decals and QR codes
Turn time onboard into an opportunity to discover and join the club.Owned social and email
Show the activities, rewards and upcoming family experiences rather than simply advertising the publication itself.Shareable school postcards
Give kids a physical invitation they can pass to a friend and extend the club through family-to-family sharing.
Engage
Send members a new issue each season with fresh puzzles, events, challenges, trip ideas and collectibles.
The goal is to create anticipation around what comes next rather than a one-time piece of mail.
Partner
Adventure Club could also create value for the places giving families a reason to travel.
Museums, attractions, sports teams, festivals and family events could participate through exclusive Adventure Club offers, ticket packages, giveaways or member perks.
That creates a stronger proposition on both sides.
For families: another reason to make the trip.
For partners: direct access to an identifiable audience of Nanaimo families already interested in Vancouver experiences.
As membership grows and Hullo can demonstrate subscriber numbers, demographics and engagement, the publication also creates valuable, limited advertising inventory.
Relevant partners could sponsor sections, activities or placements within each issue, helping offset printing and mailing costs without turning the publication into an advertising flyer.
The audience creates the value.
A known family demographic.
Delivered directly to the home.
With measurable engagement.
Convert
Connect selected activities and rewards back to travel.
Complete a challenge and redeem a free snack onboard.
Collect something new each season.
Feature experiences with trackable booking links or promotional codes.
Measure
The commercial value should ultimately be judged by behaviour.
A pilot could track:
Family club sign-ups
Cost per acquired household
QR and content engagement
Reward redemptions
Bookings connected to featured activities
Repeat family bookings
Travel frequency among participating households
Cost per incremental trip
The first issue does not need to prove the entire long-term idea.
It needs to answer a simpler question:
Does giving families more reasons to travel create more travel?
06 — Growing Up With Hullo
Start the relationship earlier.
The commercial value of Adventure Club should be measured in bookings and repeat behaviour.
But there is also a longer-term brand opportunity.
Each issue creates a recurring relationship between the family and Hullo:
Receive it.
Discover something new.
Complete the activities.
Take the trip.
Come home with a memory.
Look forward to what comes next.
For kids, those repeated experiences can build familiarity with Hullo years before they become independent travellers themselves.
Adventure Club alone will not create lifelong loyalty.
But it could become one of several ways Hullo builds it.
The long-term ambition: a generation that grows up with Hullo already part of how they think about travelling between the Island and Vancouver.
The Bigger Idea
Adventure Club is not really about producing a magazine.
It is a marketing platform built around one question:
How can Hullo create more reasons for families to travel?
The publication provides the recurring touchpoint.
The content provides the inspiration.
The activities and rewards create participation.
The trip completes the experience.
Then the next issue starts the cycle again.
The short-term goal is incremental trips.
The medium-term goal is repeat family behaviour.
The long-term opportunity is a generation that grows up with Hullo.
Selected Work
Foley Dog Treat Company: Brand, Growth, and Product Marketing
An ongoing brand and marketing leadership role across product development, packaging, campaigns, e-commerce, retail support, email, and customer experience.
The work helped grow the company from a regional dog treat brand into a stronger national retail and direct-to-consumer business, with revenue growing approximately 3x and DTC sales increasing year over year.
Gumloop: AI-Native Creative Direction
A speculative creative direction for an AI company built around one belief: AI should not make people feel replaceable. It should make them feel more capable.
The work explored how an AI brand could feel more human, cultural, and memorable through campaign strategy, visual direction, messaging, experiential ideas, social content, and brand-world building.
Lululemon: City Sweat Pop-Ups
A campaign concept designed to launch a new collection by bringing workout experiences into the city.
The idea turned everyday commuters and pedestrians into participants, outfitting them in the new collection and capturing raw moments of movement, confidence, and expression for a digital campaign powered by an IRL activation.
10+ years helping companies shape their brand, marketing, and creative direction.
Experience both agency-side and in-house, from early-stage startups to established consumer and B2B brands.
Helped grow a regional consumer brand to national distribution, more than tripling revenue as the business surpassed 5M units sold.
Built brands, campaigns, launches, packaging, digital experiences, and marketing systems from strategy through execution.
Comfortable moving between the big idea and the details, from positioning and creative direction to the work that actually ships.
Tech-forward by default, using AI and new tools to make research, workflows, and execution smarter without outsourcing the creative thinking.
Worked with founders, executives, internal teams, creative partners, retailers, and organizations across different industries and markets.
BBA in Marketing. Based in Vancouver, Canada. Fluent in English and Arabic.
The Creative Log is where I share the other side of what I do: the thoughts, sketches, experiments, and stories that don’t always fit into neat categories. It’s a space for behind-the-scenes moments, creative process, personal projects, and whatever I’m exploring lately.
Not everything fits in a portfolio.
Tell Me About Your Projects
Interested in working together? Fill out some info and I will be in touch shortly. I can’t wait to hear from you!!