Case study · Saatchi & Saatchi · 2012-2014

Running a destination brand on an international market

Tourism destination brand · community, international acquisition and crisis management · 2012-2014

Illustration: a stylised map with lines running out to several markets, one of them markedly thicker and in orange

A destination brand has no customers, it has residents, tourism professionals and an international audience that may never visit. It is the most institutional account I have run, and the one where you learn fastest that a community is not a vanity number.

Over six months the community grew 128%, 70% of it virally and 30% through advertising. The page climbed four places in nine months to become the third on the territory, and the fifteenth in its sector nationally. Engagement came in at +62% against the average of the top fifty local pages and +393% against the top fifty French pages.

And alongside it, an international acquisition system that revealed a gap nobody expected: on the same campaign, run simultaneously on two European markets, cost per sign-up was six times higher on one than on the other.

01 · Context

An island destination in the Indian Ocean, with a tourism board, a network of professional members, and competition from better funded neighbouring destinations. The mandate covered the website rebuild, a dedicated site for a distant English-speaking market, community management, monitoring and crisis handling, search, member training, and email relationship management segmented by accommodation type.

The constraint

A destination brand is judged by people who buy nothing. An elected official, a hotelier, a competing board, a resident: each has a legitimate opinion and none share an objective. Add the distant market constraint, where the destination has no spontaneous awareness and must compete with islands that spend more. And the crisis constraint: on a territory, bad news travels through the community in hours, and that community is also the population.

03 · The system

1 · Compare against a benchmark, not against yourself.

The report does not only say how much the page grew. It places it in the territory's ranking, in its sector nationally, and compares its engagement with the top fifty local and French pages. A number without a reference point allows no decision.

2 · Separate what is earned from what is bought.

Seven points of growth in ten came from virality, three from advertising. That split changes the budget call: it says the content was carrying, and so where to put the effort the following year.

3 · Treat two foreign markets as two markets.

The same campaign run at the same time in two European countries produced a cost per sign-up of 0.70 euro on one side and 4.39 euros on the other, for a cost per thousand of 0.15 euro and nearly 50 million impressions in total. The same creative, the same mechanic, a sixfold gap. Carrying on treating the two equally would have been a mistake worth several thousand euros.

4 · Segment the relationship by product, not by file.

Emails were segmented by type of accommodation rather than sent to the whole base. The result: open rates of 21 to 28% against a sector standard of 17%. Segmentation costs nothing more, it only costs giving up the single send.

5 · Say when it goes down.

On the site dedicated to the distant market, traffic fell year on year, from more than seventeen thousand to fewer than eleven thousand visitors over seven months. That number is in the report, with the costed recommendation that follows: a modest annual search budget to bring traffic back into a target range. An institutional account is lost the day the agency no longer dares to announce a drop.

04 · Results

2012 to 2014 mandate, destination brand.

Community up 128% in six months, 70% of it virally
Over 18 million impressions in one month, up 82%
Over 130,000 engaged users across three months
Engagement at +62% against the top fifty local pages and +393% against the top fifty French pages
Third page on the territory, fifteenth in its national sector, four places gained in nine months
International campaign at close to 50 million impressions, cost per thousand of 0.15 euro, and a cost per sign-up gap of 0.70 to 4.39 euros between two markets
Sends segmented by accommodation type, open rates of 21 to 28% against a 17% standard

05 · What it proves

A destination brand is run like a brand, with a benchmark, a split between earned and paid, and a market-by-market reading. What sets it apart is that it is not allowed to lie: its community is also its population, and it checks. The day the report announces a decline before the client discovers it, the relationship changes nature.