Brand response media plan for this luxury resort during the Christmas and January peak travel booking period.

The Mole Resort is a premium holiday resort located in North Devon comprising of luxury eco-conscious lodges with hot tubs, rooms within a manor house, other Estate rooms and country style cottages, The Mole Resort offers high end stays for families, couples and individuals. Set in 125 acres of countryside and offering a wide range of activities and amenities, The Mole Resort wanted to appeal to family groups as well as couples, showcasing that there is something for everyone.

Very Media were briefed on a brand response campaign to launch in between Christmas and New Year, which is a key consideration period prior to the big holiday booking window of January.

Our main challenge was the short lead time as we were briefed only 6 weeks prior to launch!  The media in scope was a blank sheet of paper and so factoring in creative production times formed part of our planning.  In addition, The Mole Resort set us strict sales and ROI targets for room bookings.

We needed to produce a media plan that would drive top of funnel awareness as well as driving bottom of funnel cost-efficient sales, all with a short timeline to launch.

Target audience

Acorn profiling data was provided so that we understood exactly the audience groups that we needed to reach.

Specifically, there was an opportunity to market the family lodges to affluent families across London and the South who are looking for somewhere to stay during school holidays. These bookings average longer durations which drives higher revenue for the business, so we identified thee as a core target audience group.

In addition, couples looking for a break outside of school holidays were identified as perfect for filling non-peak periods.  A variety of small targets were identified including dog owners, golfers, tennis players and other special interest groups.

Our approach

Despite the extremely tight timeline and the challenges this bought for creative production, we felt the campaign would be compromised without video creative and specifically, without TV on the media plan.  We worked closely with The Mole Resort’s marketing and creative teams to support them in making the dream of TV a reality.

With a 6 week lead time from brief, the campaign was launched on 27th Dec.  Activity was front weighted to January and continued into February, to drive as many bookings as possible for the remainder of the year during this peak booking period.

Our media strategy took a two-pronged approach. Firstly, we used audio-visual media channels whereby the beautiful scenic imagery, luxury facilities and range of activities could be showcased to the audience most effectively.

We analysed revenue by postcode data to identify regional hotspots and understand where budgets should be focused, minimising wastage.  We overlaid this with a maximum drivetime of 4 hours from the resort, which gave us a clear geo-targeting strategy.

Channel 4 south linear DRTV was planned to drive cost-efficient mass awareness, alongside targeted addressable TV to select audiences. On Sky AdSmart we delivered only to The Mole Resort’s previous top sales regions and audience matched individuals targeted by household income and Acorn lifestyle groups. Channel 4 VOD activity ran in London only planned to daytime hours for cost efficiency.

In addition, bespoke audience targeting segments were created on YouTube around behaviours, demographics, and in-market for holidays, as well as overlaid with top postcode areas, creating a hyper targeted video campaign.

Secondly and beyond audio visual, we created a paid content strategy, partnering with premium brand publications to run a mixture of print ads, advertorials and paid digital content bought on a cost per view basis. As The Mole Resort is a premium brand it was important that our environment was reflective, driving awareness amongst affluent audiences.

It was also important to ensure that contextually we were in the right place so for our print publications we selected relevant editions – a travel edit across targeted Hearst titles and the family guide with Conde Nast Traveller. The digital paid content ran across premium travel sites as well as driving credibility and broader reach on top news titles.

The results

Over the campaign period compared to the same period prior there was a 400% uplift in web users and a 900% uplift in revenue. The campaign video generated 14.3 million views, and 4.3 million targeted individuals watched the ad.

Sales data for the campaign period broken down by region showed that the top regions by revenue matched the regions that our TV and online video were present.

The online content generated excellent engagement exceeding average dwell times on most partners, with total cumulative viewing time equating to over 2,000 hours.

Sky ran a report matching households that were exposed to a TV ad on Sky against The Mole Resort’s sales in the same period and tracked fantastic results including a ROI of 7.25.