On the Beach: From cheap and cheerful to ‘a brand that really gets me’

Business challenge

To drive trust and great value for money in order to steal share from traditional tour operators in a very undifferentiated category.

BRAND ROLE

On the Beach understands beach holidays. They know that for their customers nothing is better than the time they spend in the sun, thus they are committed to helping them get more out of their holidays and always have the best possible experience. From making the booking process easy, to offering unique perks like free fast track and lounge access at the airport; from great hotels and locations to peace of mind guarantee. With On the Beach people always get MORE holiday.

Comms Idea

Christmas is the happiest time of the year… isn’t it? Well, scrap that. Because for a lot of people Christmas is a distant second: their beach holiday is by far the most exciting time. The one they dream about for 50 or 51 weeks. A time of freedom, when rules are relaxed and all they have to do is have fun. Which is why when the time comes, they truly want to squeeze every grain of fun out of it. We wanted to celebrate this. With the ad launching on Christmas day – we put a spin on the Andy Williams’ Classic Christmas song, re-writing the lyrics to show that with On the Beach your holiday is the most wonderful time of the year. We created 3 TV ads, one for brand and two others promoting the free fast track and lounge access perks.

As part of the launch day we created a 40” of the brand ad which led with a 10” introduction from Sir Trevor McDonald voicing that the most wonderful time of the year is just around the corner. This aired between 9-10pm on Christmas day, so to remind viewers that Christmas may be over, but the best is yet to come.

Results

The campaign successfully positioned OTB as a fun brand that understands what holidays mean to people and what people really want from their time on the beach. Campaign recognition and brand attribution were higher than average and higher than the previous ‘Ready when you are campaign’. Prompted ad awareness shifted from 13% pre-campaign to 28% post-campaign, and ad recognition and branded recognition were 54% and 23% respectively, vs. 30% and 12% respectively for the previous campaign.

Importantly, brand consideration increased for users of all key competitive brands, with more and more people putting On the Beach in their top 3 holiday providers. Key message recall was very high, with 40% of people remembering the ‘perks’ benefit. The majority of viewers appreciated the fact that the campaign portrayed a real, relatable family and agreed that it shows a sense of humour, is memorable, different, and likeable.