Travel

A labour of love that began, from a strategic perspective, back in 2018. The original date for the census was scheduled for 2021 but was delayed a year because of the pandemic. As an exercise in data collection, uptake was absolutely vital. Our campaign strategy was built around three distinct phases; awareness, persuasion and action. We used TV, cinema, social, OOH, experiential, radio, PR and video to highlight the importance of ‘filling it in’ and to engage hard-to-reach audiences and communities all over Scotland.

Curiosity Starts Here is an awareness campaign for the South of Scotland Destination Alliance?to attract more visitors to the unspoilt and relatively unknown South of Scotland. It features an endearing and inquisitive visitor, TA-M, who has arrived on a mission to explore, discover and share his findings across social media. The paid social brand campaign delivered over 3.6 million impressions, generated over 23,000 visits to the dedicated landing page and increased organic website traffic during the campaign period by over 30%.

Sailing is believing and this new website had to convert belief into bookings. Online bookings represent 70% of all revenue, so a seamless user journey for all audiences demanded a video-rich, e-commerce site. The complexity of the UX was considerable as we had to manage multiple sailings, boats and tours, as well as handle integration with the existing booking engine. But the results were monstrously successful. The new website accounted for a 40% uplift in sales, which means it paid for itself in just three months. Lovely.

This complex project demonstrates our ability to work with partner APIs, integrating existing functionality into an optimised user experience to ensure a simplified booking experience. All whilst ensuring that the personality of the brand and the individuality of their people shine through. Phew. It’s also a great example of our website build flexibility, as the core booking functionality went through a further change while the website was live. The work was done with no disruption for customers, and the website experienced no downtime.

The biggest website we have ever built, both in terms of design and testing but also in technical functionality. It has data on traffic congestion, live camera views, roadworks, closures, EV charging points, and even the salt treatment on roads for the winter. It runs on a high-availability platform; a cluster of web servers, load balancers, application firewalls and redundancy servers – as a national infrastructure service, it can’t be allowed to go down. Not ever. The site gained a 96% Lighthouse score for accessibility and the average clickthrough rate from search is up by 137%.

Giving blood was greatly inhibited by the pandemic and stocks plummeted to the lowest level since records began. After two challenging years, we helped SNBTS put blood donation back on people’s agenda. Not by wagging fingers, or guilt-tripping, but with an all-out positive message. Our campaign, which featured real-life donors from all over Scotland, launched on World Blood Donor Day to galvanise the nation. That positivity worked a treat. There was an 118% increase in visits to the website and an 87% increase in visits to the donor webportal.

The 'Pen Names' exhibition invited visitors to explore how ideas of gender, genre, privacy, reputation, and authenticity influence authors' use of pen names. Our campaign used striking visuals to dramatise the idea that some authors are not always who you think they are! The campaign ran across OOH, radio, digital and social channels.

In mid-2021 international borders were finally opening up and travel was once again on the horizon. VisitScotland needed a campaign that helped the Scottish tourism industry recover quickly and responsibly. The campaign launched globally, sending an emotive message to the world that ‘Scotland is Calling’. Creative ran across film, OOH, digital, social and PR, showing a 45% increase in traveller spend and 179% increase in bookings from North America.

Probing stagnant household recycling rates, we found the underlying cause and audience that would help bridge the gap between Scotland’s recycling ambitions and the resistant reality. After digging into our audience’s attitudes, we crafted a campaign (and character) that spoke to our audience in a humorous manner that resonated and provided them with actionable information to empower behaviour change. The campaign ran across, film, social and digital, delivering high levels of uptake and engagement, exceeding our social impressions target and website page views.

Scotland’s food and drink industry was hit particularly hard by the pandemic. In response, Scotland Food & Drink and the Scottish Government collaborated on a consumer-facing campaign that increased support for local producers. Across multiple channels such as film, press, social, and partnership, we reminded the people of Scotland of the wealth of produce that was available on their doorsteps. It also served up some tasty results with more than half of campaign recognisers buying Scottish produce after seeing the campaign.

As the UK’s leading cause of food poisoning, Campylobacter causes unpleasant diarrhoea, nausea, and vomiting. For many, however, it can lead to hospitalisation and even death. We created an eye-catching campaign that ran across OOH, digital, social and radio, to warn the nation of the risks, successfully cutting through the usual Christmas advertising clutter. It out-performed all expectations on engagement and action, delivering 7.5 million impressions against the 4.8 forecast.

You know you’ve had a great family day out when the kids are completely knackered afterwards. This was the insightful idea behind our family membership recruitment campaign for Historic Scotland. Running across TV, social and outdoor, we honed in on the weary satisfaction that only comes after a full day of adventure at one of Historic Scotland’s epic properties.