A new identity, uncovered with data, drives a record-breaking surge in interest - and visits - for a popular destination

A popular travel destination challenged us to increase visitation while also attracting a higher-value traveler who would spend more while visiting. The destination believed its previous strategy was undifferentiated and could be applied to any of its competitors. Big Village was challenged to innovate while still converting demand. Previous agency partners had used audience proxies to develop and deploy campaigns, which resulted in interchangeable work.

Data: A foundational segmentation study was developed to understand the high-value travel market, determine who to target, and what they require to make a choice about their next vacation. The quantitative study, combined with other qualitative factors, uncovered six distinct segments, each with a unique set of requirements and a set of attitudes and sentiments to build all communications strategies. The six segments were seamlessly integrated into Big Village’s planning platform for precise analysis — and with no loss of data fidelity.

Planning: Comprehensive brand strategy and communications plans, tailored to each segment, were developed, helping guide not only brand position and advertising strategy but also defining the interplay between all marketing functions such as PR, email, and organic social media. A unified creative strategy and omnichannel media plan spearheaded the effort, and paid placements aligned with the customer journey steps revealed in the research. Since no segment data fidelity was lost at the planning stage, Big Village’s media solution delivered a more accurate media mix. The budget was strategically reallocated to tactics precisely associated with the high-value target audience.

Activation: Rather than relying on third-party data to build proxies of our segments and lookalikes in media activation platforms, exact representations of each high-value target were deployed from our planning platform to our own media, plus activation partners (including Meta, Google, TikTok, programmatic, and DOOH). Creative assets were produced and deployed in tandem and tailored to engage the target at the precise journey moments defined in the research and accurately aligned with each target’s needs. A unified measurement plan synchronized audience performance and creative results across all media platforms and tactics while campaigns were in-market. Campaign data was seamlessly piped into an MMM tool and mapped to the client’s CRM to understand holistic performance and guide subsequent strategic decisions.

The impact was meaningful:

• Campaigns reached high-value target segments 40-50% more accurately
• Campaign budget efficiency increased 25%+
• Visits to the destination’s website increased 61% YoY
• Overall visitation to the destination increased 13% YoY and reached all-time highs
• The integrated campaign won noteworthy industry recognition from the Magellan Awards, Skift, and Adrian Awards, among other honors.