From bland and boring to beautiful and bold – the complete overhaul of a high-end travel and lifestyle brand’s marketing and communications to entice HNWIs to OWN THEIR BEST LIFE

The client: The Hideaways Club

The Challenge
Completely reposition THC, with its portfolio of stunning co-owned exclusive homes managed by an old-school board of directors and shareholders with strong views and high expectations but little knowledge of marketing and communications in a digital world. THC was a brand with lacklustre personality, dated content, a boring-as-hell website, and no digital lead generation strategy.  

This assignment was a marketeers dream from beginning to end and we loved every minute of it.

The Solution
We wasted no time in stripping this brand right back to its to bare bones and worked closely with the management team to redefine The Hideaways Club’s core value proposition. We proposed ‘OWN YOUR BEST LIFE’ as the brand’s new strapline because that is EXACTLY what the brand promises their ideal client.

The entire content strategy hung off these four words, and along with a refreshed colour palette, aspirational stock imagery, beautifully written corporate copy and a bucket load of Member stories to play with, we created a detailed 12-month comms plan straddling digital, social and print media and a rock solid lead-generation strategy that included a sexy sales funnel, which lured in potential HNWI members via Facebook and Google ads with a free ‘How To Own Your Best Life’ guide at its core. 

The results
Quality leads and new members. And with a minimum of £250,000 investment needed to qualify as a member, this was no easy task! We left them with a slick, sophisticated comms strategy and a clear vision to take them into the future. 

Go here instead and visit Austria’s lakes and mountains for the chance to get back to nature and restore your wellbeing

The client: Austrian National Tourist Office (ANTO)

The challenge
Present Austria as the ideal summer holiday destination for getting back to nature and restoring visitors’ wellbeing post-pandemic, with a particular focus on the healthy effects of being in and around water.  

The solution
Through our Girl About Travel brand, we created a European Lakes & Mountains hub for community members that blended editorial content with commercial goals, and led it with two main focuses. 

Firstly, we commissioned Ali, our Girl About the Lake District, to visit Austria and create content not just for her engaged and passionate local audience but to use her broader appeal as a wild swimmer and feed that into the wider Girl About channels. 

Secondly, we created a mini magazine directory of 50 fabulous places to stay across the Alps, and included an ANTO advertorial as well as one of our exclusive Girl About Travel holiday itineraries. 

The aim of these two pieces was to drive traffic towards the Club, where visitors would find further Austria expertise from local experts presented in informal videos and further exclusive holiday itineraries, created with local DMCs and bookable though GAT’s booking partner, Charitable Travel.  

The results
Three beautiful, bookable and ATOL-protected, experience-filled itineraries built by us, which now feature on Girl About Travel. We’ve created tons of stunning content that ANTO are free to use, and this ongoing campaign puts all this and more in front of our highly engaged Girl About Travel audience with a monthly reach of over 250,000 women in the UK.

Watch the show then visit the set! Using the big London stage to promote a tiny city in the middle of the Atlantic ocean on the back of the hugely acclaimed, award-winning Come From Away production

The client: Destination St. John’s & Newfoundland, & Labrador Tourism, Canada

The challenge
St. John’s is a tiny city in the Province of Newfoundland in Eastern Canada, just a five-hour flight from the UK. Until recently this magical little part of Canada was unknown to the UK, with very little bookable product available in tour operator programmes and a serious lack of consumer awareness. 

The solution
Come From Away – a beautiful play based on the warmth of those who call Newfoundland home and a tale of the very best of humanity – stormed the West End stage in 2019.

Lyndsey quickly set up meetings with the advertising agency behind the hit show, and negotiated an advertising campaign idea to promote the show and the Canadian city centred around the concept of Watch the show then visit the set! 

The campaign ran in two major London newspapers with cover wraps, a competition to win a trip to Newfoundland, tickets to the show, plus extensive editorial coverage.

The aim of the campaign was to use the show as a springboard for St. John’s and Newfoundland, and enable the destinations to promote their reasons to visit, including the island’s incredible people, to a London-centric audience. 
Lyndsey also arranged an event for UK tour operators (with support from the show), with a smart dinner in London followed by going to watch Come From Away. 

She also secured partnership activity and funding with Trailfinders, St. John’s International Airport and Air Canada as part of this hugely successful campaign, which swooped a Travel Marketing Award for best Advertising Campaign under £250,000 in 2020. 

The results
Newfoundland bookings were up 26% YOY for 2020
St. John’s bookings were up 68% for 2020 
Award winner at The Travel Marketing Awards 

MAKE A DAY OF IT – Putting a small Yorkshire market town on the map

The client: Otley BID

The challenge
Otley sits in the shadows of one of the North’s most exclusive towns – Ilkley is just 4 miles down the road. But Otley, a working-class town with soul, is packed with cool independents and surrounded by natural beauty. A comms strategy to polish this rough diamond was needed, and we were up against a whole board of volunteers and members. It was a classic case of ‘too many cooks’ all claiming to be marketing experts, but with our excellent PR skills, we knew we could lead them all to a crystal-clear vision of what their town should be doing to get more visitors.

The solution
We used our extensive experience and laced it with plenty of charm to create a marketing and comms strategy that promised to get everyone onside. A day-trippers dream, Otley needed a strapline that would entice people from miles around to visit the town, so we came up with ‘MAKE A DAY OF IT’. 

We built Otley’s entire comms plan around a clever play on MAKE IT A DAY FOR…. allowing us to promote the town’s ‘reasons to visit’ in a clear and consistent way.  A new brand logo, a new website, and a library of video footage and photography for use on social media, plus some pretty awesome PR efforts with our regional and national press contacts AND a Christmas John Lewis-style advert featuring many local businesses, propelled this town to stardom in the North.  

The results
We put Otley on the map quite literally – the town is now included in a number of coach touring company itineraries as a stop-off (in 2020, the town was a coach tourism awards finalist). Plus happy volunteers and BID members – the cherry on the top of this project.