Case Studies
California Travel and Tourism Commission
Promoting California in the UK
California Travel and Tourism Commission (CTTC) briefed us to deliver a greater number of high-spending holidaymakers to California, while breaking the hold of New York and Florida as tourist destinations.
Our research suggested there is a three-stage process to booking a holiday: inspiration, information and action. This process informed our tactics and media recommendations - we wanted to reach our target audience at each stage of the process.
The inspiration phase was fulfilled by visual media, with TV reaching more of our core audience than any other medium. The nature of the TV ad allowed people to see the breadth of California's offer. Our aim was to put California into people's minds as a viable holiday option.
The first phase of TV was a heavyweight launch between Christmas and New Year. The aim was to capitalise on the high-quality programming for our ABC1 25+ audience and to reach them when thinking about booking holidays.
The next phase took the more refined approach of being highly selective in our programming placement to ensure the creative would cut through. This was backed by a co-branded campaign with The Times through print and online, which saw a large uplift of traffic to the California website and, importantly, provided California with a database of 10,000 potential holidaymakers. This strategy also involved teaming up with an airline that regularly booked ads to appear alongside our activity, enabling people to book their trip to California. Finally, the information stage was boosted by our paid search activity, which now delivers more than 92% of web traffic to Visitcalifornia.co.uk.
The campaign delivered 71% awareness across the UK and generated $670m in travel revenue and a return of $171 for every dollar spent - $121 above the average return on investment that California got back from other worldwide territories, according to Strategic Marketing and Research Inc (December 2008).
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