2018 Awards Preview – Most Effective Travel & Tourism Campaign or Solution

Ahead of our 2018 Effective Mobile Marketing Awards, well be previewing the nominees in each category, giving you a glimpse at the high quality of entries weve seen this year. In this preview, we’re breaking down the campaigns and solutions from within the travel & tourism sector.

American Airlines, Mobsta and Mediacom – Brand Campaign
American Airlines is a strong global brand, but in the UK, it struggles against the likes of British Airways and Virgin, with less than 5 per cent share of the UK long-haul market. It was looking to secure more Business Class customers from the UK.

By cross-referencing American Airlines traveller data with the members of the British-American Business Council (which has over 2,000-member companies), Mediacom had established that Business Class travellers who travel regularly to the USA are heavily concentrated in 2 London locations: Canary Wharf and The City, so the entire media solution was focused in these areas.

The campaign targeted travellers in London’s iconic Black Cabs. American Airlines ‘wrapped’ 85 taxis (along with tip-on seats and receipts) that were predominantly based around Canary Wharf and The City. In a media first, these moving vehicles were also geofenced. Exposed devices were identified by connecting to the taxi API platform, enabling the taxi GPS to be geofenced and capturing device IDs within this moving geofence. These devices were then retargeted with a unique kind of location-informed sequential messaging via the user’s mobile devices, ensuring that the messaging on the taxi media was reinforced to the target audience, via their smartphone.

People exposed to both taxis and mobile advertising saw a significant shift in purchase intent of 8.8 percentage points; an 8.6 percentage point shift in brand familiarity; and a positive shift in unaided brand awareness of 1.6 percentage points. The wider campaign saw an overall increase of 9.8 percentage points in purchase intent, driven predominantly by taxi and mobile activity.

Royal Caribbean International, Weve and Mindshare – A Smooth Sailing Launch
The launch of a new cruise ship doesn’t happen every day, and for the debut voyage of the Independence of the Sea, Royal Caribbean’s latest vessel, the brand wanted to capitalise on this event, raising awareness and driving future purchase intent. To deliver on Royal Caribbean’s goals, the team behind the campaign executed an SMS campaign targeted at three bespoke audiences, based on Weve’s verified data.

Using O2 international roaming data, Weve identified consumers who had been to specified European and Caribbean countries in the six months prior to the campaign to make up the ‘known travellers’ audience. ‘Travel enthusiasts’ were identified using behavioural data to find mobile users who had search for top cruise domains, while ‘proximity travellers’ used demographic and location data to find consumers aged 25-44 close to Southampton and surrounding areas.

The campaign delivered to over 245,000 people, with an average CTR of 2.2 per cent, one per cent above the benchmark. In a brand study conducted two days after the campaign, 50 per cent of consumers weren’t aware of Royal Caribbean’s new cruise ship prior to getting the message, and one in three were now more likely to find out about the cruise packages offered by the travel brand.

The Richards Group and GumGum – Go RVing 2018 Campaign
Go RVing is a coalition of manufacturers, component suppliers, dealers, and campgrounds. They aim to provide the public and media with general information about the benefits of RV travel and camping.

The coalition wanted to make RVing cool and mainstream, bringing the experience to younger audiences. To make this happen, it Go RVing wanted to target two groups: people aged 30 to 49 with kids and people aged 25 to 39 who are thinking about or starting a family. Within these age groups, it was looking to meet people from a place of shared interest in things like travelling, road trips, being outdoors, spending time with family, camping, visiting national parks, outdoor activities, and sightseeing.

GumGum used its computer vision and image recognition technology to place Go RVing’s message within hyper-relevant content. This content was placed in contextually relevant environments where the target audience were primed for engagement and interest.

The campaign achieved a click-through rate which is 15 times higher than the industry standard and there was a view conversion rate of 31.8 per cent.