2018 Silver Best B2B

Agency: Havas helia

Client: Premier Inn

Campaign name: Premier Inn Business Booker

Campaign Overview

Changing booking habits, step-by-step

The brief

Business bookings are crucial to the Premier Inn.

There are those who book traditionally through the website, and those who use the super-efficient Premier Inn Business Booker online tool. The challenge was to make the first group convert to Business Booker.

Strategy

Havas helia and Premier Inn recognised there was a sense of frustration throughout the travel booking fraternity. With business travellers visiting the same clients month after month, staying in the same hotels time after time, and making the same requests again and again, the target audience are forced into typing the same details into their computers continuously.

This behaviour repeats across many more members of staff, and these repetitive bookings take time away from the work the audience really want to be doing. This fundamental understanding that relentless repetition is a major pain point was key in driving the strategy.

The strategy was to shine a light on this issue and remind the audience of just how painful it can make the daily grind, before providing them with a solution to the problem: the Premier Inn Business Booker tool.

Creativity

The audience had proven impervious to the charms of the Business Booker, so a big idea was key. And the choice of channel was critically important for a B2B audience.

To make the creative stand out a disruptive approach was required, so the work centred on Direct mail. The campaign was restricted to standard print items, yet these restrictions sparked the creative solution. And what better way to remind people of the time wasted repeating mundane tasks than to present them with another one in this case an envelope to open, then another, then another?

Once inside, the theme continued as the messaging repeated itself. Everything the recipient did further dramatised the repetitive daily problem they were facing at work.

Results

By confronting the audience with an uncomfortable truth before providing a solution, the approach proved more disruptive and it paid off.

63 companies signed up to Business Booker, and £198,509 of new revenue was generated by 31 July. The projected annual booking value stands at £347,437, and for companies signed up to Business Booker, Premier Inn tracked a 21% increase in monthly spend, year-on-year, between February-May 2018.

The campaign produced a return on marketing investment of £23.90 per £1 spent.

Team

Havas helia - Alice Hannam, Account Manager - Mark Chater, Associate Creative Director - Mike Watson, Creative Director - Aaron Miller, Design Lead - David Burrows, Planning Director

Premier Inn - Amy Brooks, Commercial Marketing Manager (Lifecycle)