Almond Resorts & Fitness First

On behalf of the premium all inclusive Almond Resorts in Barbados and St. Lucia we have teamed up with Fitness First and the British Heart Foundation to support a massive fundraising campaign for the British Heart Foundation (BHF)– launching with a Fitness First world record for the largest simultaneous spin class attended by Dr. Hilary Jones.

The Million Miles Challenge is a two-month campaign to raise funds to help beat heart disease. Around 35,000 members and non-members are set to be involved pounding the treadmills and clocking up one million miles on cross trainers, rowers and bikes.

To enter the challenge, Fitness First members can pick up a special log card in club for a £2 suggested donation to record their own miles exercised while in their club with Fitness First hoping to break the one million mile mark by the end of June. The health and fitness chain is also encouraging non members to take part by downloading a free 5 day guest pass at www.fitnessfirst.com/million.

Challenge participants will be entered into a prize draw to win a premium, all inclusive Almond Resorts Caribbean holiday for two to Barbados or St Lucia (www.almondresorts.co.uk). Images, web address and Almond Resorts logos are included on promotional material wherever possible.

Fitness First members are being encouraged to fill in their record card achievements at www.bhf.org.uk/fitnessfirst to help reach the million mile target.

We will be  keeping you up to date with progress!

Record-breaking Ontario Campaign

McCluskey International has been responsible for the UK advertising for Ontario Tourism since 2004.  For Spring 2008, we developed an umbrella campaign for Ontario and its two main cities, Toronto and Ottowa.

Ontario is home to some of Canada’s most iconic and popular destinations – Canada’s largest and most cosmopolitan city, Toronto; the nation’s captivating capital, Ottawa; and the thundering natural wonder that is the world-renowned Niagara Falls.

Our brief was to increase awareness and touring sales to Ontario as well as short city breaks to Toronto and Ottawa. This created three distinct target markets: 40-65 year olds with a high income looking for an experiential trip of a lifetime to Ontario; 40-65 year olds looking for a city break with culture and heritage in Ottawa; and younger, trendier females looking for a city break with designer shops, great nightlife and cool culture in the city of Toronto.

A striking campaign was developed with the tagline “Get Into Ontario”. This encompassed the three different destinations and gave some synergy thereby educating the UK consumer that both Toronto and Ottawa are located within Ontario.

Our Trade Marketing team negotiated with four different tour operators who each supplied a price point and a call to action for the advertisements. A dedicated  splash page was built by Ontario Tourism and this was used as the call to action for the touring product.

Media was selected using Target Group Index analysis for each destination. We put ads into the weekend supplement magazines, BBC Wildlife and Country Living. We placed the city break adverts within the weekend newspaper travel display sections, Ottawa having a slightly different media choice than Toronto.

The campaign saw the biggest ever spend on online advertising. We invested in both site and audience centric sites buying over 45m impressions. The creative for the online advertisements reflected the press and magazine adverts and 30″ and 15″ touring online videos were produced. The city online ads clicked through to transactional sites for the tour operators whilst the touring online ads clicked through to the splash page.

The campaign ran from 1st to the 31st March and during that period, the Ontario splash page enjoyed an enormous 63,000 hits. In addition, the tour operators saw flight sales increase year on year by over 20% and bookings were up by over 8%.

Almond Resorts teams up with Adams Kids

Our brief was to promote the premium all-inclusive Almond Resorts in the Caribbean as an ideal option for a family holiday.

What better partner to have than Adams Kids, a fashion retailer for kids 0–10 years with over 250 stores across the UK and with a footfall of over a million per month.

For a whole month in the Summer of 2008, Adams Kids shop windows had a backdrop of an Almond Resort  with strut cards both in the windows and throughout the stores.

Entry forms were displayed at till points where the customers were able to enter a prize draw to win a family holiday to St Lucia or Barbados.

The promotion was further advertised on a dedicated flyer that went out to 150,000 active Adamscard holders and was also featured on the Adams website with a link through to Almond’s homepage.

The promotion received an amazing 22,000 entries with over 3,340 requests for more information on the Almond Resorts.

In short, it was the best promotion that Adams Kids has ever run!

Antler Luggage & the Mantis Collection

A travel brand considered to be one of the world’s finest luggage companies is a natural choice as an affinity partner, especially when they are in over 500 stores throughout the UK including Harrods, John Lewis and House of Fraser.

When the marketers of Antler Luggage were looking for a safari product for a themed promotion, we offered them an African Adventure Holiday with the Mantis Collection.

The prize competition was promoted during Easter 2007 with striking indoor displays and windows banners, show cards, swing tickets and entry leaflet.

The competition realized 5,200 entries with 4,312 requesting further information on the Mantis Collection.  The vast amount of branded promotional material in areas of such high footfall also built a strong awareness of the Mantis brand.

Regione Piemonte & Carluccio’s

We teamed up with Carluccio’s Italian Restaurants on behalf of Italy’s Regione Piemonte, a perfect match for a destination proud of its gourmet heritage and vineyards.

Carluccio’s restaurants are bright, bustling places with a trattoria feel, with numerous restaurants in London and the South East. They are frequented by a gourmet, well travelled, well educated, sophisticated clientele, precisely the target market that Regione Piemonte was trying to reach.

We ran a joint promotion with posters and competition cards in all 26 restaurants. The promotion was featured on www.carluccios.com and an e-newsletter was sent out to 3,000 customers.

On offer was a competition to win a fabulous trip to the region of Piedmont in Northern Italy, including a weekend in Turin. As a result, we received over 5,000 entries with 3,200 opting in for more information on the region.

Ticket to Toronto

We have been working on behalf of Ontario Tourism on joint consumer campaigns with tour operators within the UK market since 2004. In September 2008, a print and online fall campaign was executed by our consumer marketing division to promote Toronto city breaks.

The ads also appeared at London Underground stations, as you can see above.

We partnered with 4 local UK tour operators to close the sale. Each was asked to supply a Toronto city break package designed to drive the British consumer to take such a trip prior to Christmas. The overall positioning of the campaign was to promote the benefits of taking such a city break – great value for money (much cheaper than competition such as New York), fantastic Christmas shopping opportunities and a quick, easy weekend getaway – only a 7 hour flight.

A portion of the creative was designed to drive consumers direct to the relevant operators and the remainder drove consumers to a dedicated campaign splash page on the Ontario web site. This splash page provided more destination information and played host to each tour operator’s call to action, logo and price points. In addition, one tour operator was asked to supply a competition prize (consisting of return flights from London to Heathrow, return transfers and 3 nights accommodation in Toronto for two) to aid in boosting the campaign response.

This campaign worked well by building awareness for Ontario and driving sales to Toronto with participating tour operators sighting an increase in sales.

More great advertising

Another great advertising campaign out at the moment is from Silverjet, giving Luton Airport some much needed publicity….