Known for its “Best in Beach” travel offerings, CheapCaribbean was on the hunt for a new campaign that would resonate with millennial and Gen Z travelers and ultimately drive awareness and bookings. We had to think outside-of-the-box and create an innovative and newsworthy campaign that incorporated the following KPIs:
Throughout our research we found that astrology has seen a resurgence in popularity. Studies showed that over 62% of Gen Z and 65% of millennials say their zodiac sign accurately represents their character traits.
We jumped at the opportunity to be among the first to build an integrated astrology-led program. The result was “Cosmic Caribbean,” a campaign that allows travelers to book their next trip inspired by their zodiac signs. To bring a voice to the program, we signed on astrologer Valerie Mesa as CheapCaribbean’s Chief Astrologer, lending insights from her readings to help generate content across channels.
Cosmic Caribbean touched every aspect of CheapCaribbean’s business model, inspiring new design concepts for social, email and SMS content. With the help of our Chief Astrologer Valerie Mesa, we began to map-out our content plan for our year-long Cosmic Caribbean campaign. We designed a new landing page that housed details of bookable options available to travelers and interactive elements including giveaways and a zodiac-inspired digital coloring book. With the intention of not only driving brand awareness, but also sales, we secured a Cosmic Caribbean promo code that would give travelers up to $200 off their vacation booking. Astrology-forward messaging was weaved into PR efforts and major brand initiatives like CheapCaribbean’s renowned Noble Beach Prize Competition, matching winning hotel’s with their like-minded zodiac sign.
To launch the campaign, we deployed a robust media and influencer relations strategy in order to vastly increase awareness of the new campaign. In addition to traditional PR tactics such as an announcement at the time of the launch and dedicated pitching efforts, we partnered with Bustle, Well+Good, Elite Daily and Cosmopolitan, as well as multiple influencers, sending them on an astrology-inspired trip based on their star maps with curated activities recommended by Chief Astrologer Valerie Mesa. This PR-led strategy resulted in not only top coverage for the new campaign, but it also garnered an enhanced social media presence that played a pivotal role in driving sales through use of the dedicated promo code.
To boost web traffic and social media presence, the team leaned into astrology-forward messaging with tactical SMS, email distribution and the use of giveaways to attract visitation and engage with new audiences. The social media used content from a dedicated shoot with Valerie to develop short-form media clips that were edited to seamlessly integrate into a consumer’s TikTok feed without an overtly branded messaging or sales pitch, organically earning likes. We sent out monthly emails with zodiac-sign flip-cards that flipped to reveal varying messages for each astrological sign. From which sunglasses to choose to which beach destination to travel to next, each star-sign had personalized content that related to our customers.
To finish out our year-long Cosmic Caribbean campaign, we launched a “12 Days of Cosmic” series on social media filled with multiple cosmic-inspired swag giveaways, an Astro-reading from Valerie Mesa giveaway, and a trip giveaway. We promoted the 12 Days of Cosmic series in emails to encourage our mailing list to join in on the fun on our social channels. The series concluded with the announcement of Cosmic Caribbean returning in 2024.
Since its launch in January 2023, the Cosmic Caribbean campaign has become a fan favorite among travelers, driving revenue and awareness on all channels for CheapCaribbean. Through this campaign, we were able to create and distribute cosmic-inspired content that resonated with millions of millennial and gen-z travelers. On average, Cosmic related emails saw a transaction and revenue increase as compared to a standard content email, and overall we saw that people who were exposed to the Cosmic Caribbean campaign were 17% more likely to convert. Overall, we consider our Cosmic Caribbean campaign to be a huge success.
Top results include:
