2015 Bronze Travel, Leisure and Entertainment

MEC UK

Butlins

How we got Butlins 25% more bookings whilst saving 90% of the spend

The Team

Dominic Charles, Danielle Goodacre, Alicia Coghlan, Ian Parish

Contributors

Now - Creative Agency

Campaign overview

Butlins needed to find a more cost-effective channel to deliver sales growth in the January period. This is the key month for Butlins and its competitors, with 50% of breaks in the category booked by month end.

The battle had previously been about winning the most important medium for the family – the TV. While direct response TV was still working, comprehensive econometrics showed it was delivering limited short-term payback in this critical sales period, with a high incremental cost per sale despite £1 million investment in previous years.

By replacing brand TV with a social video acquisition strategy, the campaign delivered more bookings for much less investment and beat Butlins’ targets.

Strategy

Mums, the key growth audience, held ingrained negative and out-dated perceptions of the Butlins brand. The company still needed to use the benefits of brand TV advertising to show it had changed, but the delivery mechanic was wrong.

Among this audience, social media use is high. The campaign needed to engage mums in these channels, with the right message, to change their perceptions, engage them with Butlins and increase sales.

So the brand took the leap its competitors would not and drove its media investment by behaviour, not channel, to devise a TV strategy for the digital age.

Creativity

With the targeting benefits of digital channels for video advertising, the campaign used four different copy versions to appeal to different audience segments. TV ads were designed to be equally successful on the social channels mums used most. Key brand imagery was established, while Butlins’ new product propositions Just for Tots, Dance with Diversity and Chalets were presented in the first five seconds of the ad to prevent viewers from skipping.

A host of signals informed how, when and who was targeted, with geo-targeting used to ensure those living within two hours of a resort saw content appropriate to that location. Who the audience followed, who followed them, the type of videos they viewed and their searches informed the ad they were served. With such in-depth audience understanding, planning was based on the team’s own insights rather than the social channels’ algorithms.

Results

Econometrics showed that by replacing a £1 million brand budget with just £100,000 on socially-led, targeted video, the campaign delivered more than 7,000 additional bookings – a 25% increase from the 2014 brand TV campaign and a cost per booking of £14, an impressive -85% versus target.

The campaign team also proved that its insight-driven planning beat algorithmic-targeted activity, including a 50% improvement in cost per view from £0.03 to £0.02, well below target.