Regional Early Booker Campaign

Background

We’ve worked with First Choice, Thomson and TUI on many projects over the years producing various tactical campaigns along with brand support. To run alongside this brief First Choice ran a national TV and retail campaign during August & September to change the brand perception of its ‘understanding families’ concept by selling it’s Holiday Villages to the family audience.

The Brief

The objective of this campaign was to convince customers to book next summer’s holiday from their regional airport now. This was a tactical campaign that combined both HEAD and HAND messages. The objective of this campaign is to: Convince customers to book a holiday from their regional airport now. We also needed to communicate the benefits of booking early as well as featuring destinations and prices for both press and outdoor. Alongside this we had to sell in the benefits into our audience which are:

You’ll get the best choice of holidays so you will get the holiday you want on the date you want. You have more time to plan for it . You have more time to pay for it, and by booking early you can take advantage of some great offers such as low deposits – from just £30 with thousands of free kid’s places available.

The Creative

It was important to tie our creative campaign with the insights we had on our early booker’s audience, we knew they were less affluent families predominantly struggling but secure families, and sometimes career couples. They are restricted by time and can only book during specific periods and are price-sensitive, but well-organised people who like to book ahead. The creative also had to position First Choice as the family holiday expert and work across all media such as press, outdoor and radio.

From a visual perspective, we wanted to keep the creative messaging very simple, a simple headline ‘Get your towel down early’, and body copy that could be read and understood within ten seconds of reading it, along with evidence of a great value holiday with three examples of pricing. From an image perspective, we wanted to take ownership of the family space, with the simple image of a child on a beautiful beach wrapped securely in a towel (reference to the headline) that supported the headline yet didn’t distract.