We have worked with VisitScotland for over 15 years on projects ranging from the production of visitor guides to the creation of destination brands. Our contribution to the VisitScotland Ayrshire & Arran Short Breaks campaign deserves special mention as it confirmed the importance of database analysis and interrogation in building an accurate picture of the ‘visitor’. It worked like this: Details on age group, geographic spread and interests were correlated and developed into ‘iconic offers’; then, research on the region’s gateway markets was married with this to create a series of clearly defined target markets. This confirmed that not only were potential visitors unaware of the ‘offers’, but the area itself was failing to tick the right boxes. Not good news, but it did confirm the need to tackle the project in two stages: Phase one concentrating on raising the profile of the area; with follow-up activity targeting specific market segments with a series of seasonal offers. This improved the database, allowing us to use personalised direct mail to ‘speak directly’ to the audiences with incentive driven offers.
Of course, design did play its part in the success of this campaign. Evocative imagery, linked to the key iconic offers, was applied across a mix of media. As the region identified its voice, the campaign themes evolved from the initial concept of ‘Offers more’ to ‘Always welcome’.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating and at the end of the day it’s all about results. Built-in measurability and response mechanisms confirmed that campaign results surpassed expectations - exhibition brochure conversion of 30% from Belfast and 24% from Norway speaks for itself. |
