2013 Bronze Best use of Search

Client Kuoni

How did the campaign make a difference? A highly creative, multi-signal search approach with creative inspired by Kuoni's beautiful destinations and premium offering smashed targets. Organic traffic increased by 40%, with 37% growth in social referrals. Organic search became Kuoni's biggest digital channel, accounting for 67.3% of revenue – up from 50% in 2012.

What details of the strategy make this a winning entry? The considerable challenge was to increase market share and organic traffic by 15% year on year, through organic search development and increased social engagement. There was an additional hurdle of a 5% budget reduction. The start was initiating a flexible bi-monthly project structure made up of 70% creative services – a radically different approach to the previous, more traditional SEO monthly retainer. To reflect the quality, expertise and excellence of Kuoni's award-winning travel product online, creativity was at the core of this multi-signal search approach. The plan was to build large, interactive, relevant and engaging digital assets around highly-developed creative concepts. The quality of the concepts would build social signals and high authority links, along with advanced outreach strategies. To develop destination authority, the focus was building on- and off-site content by destination. Online customers love to interact with beautiful images of beaches in the Maldives, Thai culture, sunsets in the Caribbean or Australian seascapes. Resource was also allocated to reactive and agile content marketing efforts, relating to news or timely global events, to harness online interest at peak times.

How did creativity bring the strategy to life? Kuoni's inspiring subject matter was rich territory for creativity. All creative assets had to be as beautiful and inspirational as Kuoni's product, including video, infographics, animated GIFs or interactive maps. A Pinterest board of Kuoni images was created and seeded to Kuoni's community of followers once a week. Beautiful images had straplines depicting each as a dream or wish, like 'Catch the sunset in the Caribbean', 'Catch a wave at sunrise in Queensland', 'Sample the delicious wine in the Tara Valley'. After identifying high online views and social interactions around dance tuition videos, Cuba was highlighted with a 'How to Dance a Cuban Salsa' video.

Results Organic traffic increased by 40% year on year against a target of 15%, with a 37% growth in social referrals. Organic search accounted for 67.3% of revenue, up from 50% in 2012. Kuoni is now ranked #1 rank for 'Thailand holidays', 'Maldives holidays', 'Mauritius holidays', and 'Sri Lanka holidays'. YouTube referrals increased by 155.6% and Twitter referrals by 362.3%.