The clients briefed Good Relations to revive sales on from London Heathrow to Sabah, Borneo in the wake of the MH370 disaster. With sales to the region suffering greatly, the clients wanted to go beyond the traditional press trip and reach the broadest possible audience.
Good Relations worked alongside the iambassador team to identify bloggers from iambassador's network of the world's leading travel, food and wedding bloggers. They were tasked with amplifying social media activity across their network to showcase the unique offerings of Royal Brunei Airlines (RB) and Borneo, specifically tailored to a honeymoon audience.
The content they produced through an inspiring cinematic video, an eBook, numerous blog features, and a 'live' social media campaign was designed to:
RB prides itself as a boutique airline, flying to some of the world's most desirable destinations and providing some of the best airline service. Borneo is recognised as offering a unique experience, with much of its wildlife found nowhere else in the world. The very special experiences offered by both RB and Sabah, and the expense required to visit, led us to focus our campaign on an equally special experience — promoting Sabah as a world-class destination for weddings and honeymoons, with RB providing the luxury service to match.
With this campaign, we wanted to go beyond the traditional tactic of press trips - we wanted to reach the broadest audience possible. Recognising the huge influence travel bloggers and social media have on those booking holidays, we identified some of the world's most influential travel, food and wedding bloggers through the iambassador blogger network.
Working alongside these bloggers, we developed an exclusive honeymoon experience to showcase the unique offerings of RB and Borneo, to include the hotels, the food, the wildlife, the culture and the activities, specifically tailored to a honeymoon audience.
In November 2014 we visited Borneo, providing the bloggers with content, both during the flight and at the destination, for them to share on their social channels and develop into blog posts. All activity across social media was anchored to the hashtag #LoveSabah. This gave those interested in the destination a route to a number of different perspectives. It also meant that we could easily monitor the campaign's success.
The trip was timed for just ahead of the peak booking period for honeymooners in the UK. We then arranged for the majority of content to be staggered across January, February and March, to provide a consistent drumbeat of posts advocating the destination, so that it stayed front of mind for those planning honeymoons.
The campaign was an unequivocal success. According to Brandseye.com, the #LoveSabah hashtag generated AVE in excess of USD 1.1 million.
BrandsEye reported 52.3 million opportunities to see (OTS) across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Google+ 01.11.14 - 01.02.15.
Social stats include:
During the four-month campaign, Royal Brunei Airlines saw a year-on-year increase of 10% in flight bookings from London Heathrow to Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. Sales on this route had previously been flat-lining. Royal Brunei then reported a substantial increase in flights to Sabah of almost 200% year-on-year in the months following the campaign. Many of these bookings were made in Business Class.
These increases were maintained throughout 2015. Thanks to the success of the campaign, flights from London to Sabah, have become some of RB's most popular.There was also a short-term package deal promotion run on the bloggers' sites in February 2015. This resulted in 28 luxury holiday bookings, and further requests for travel outside of the special offer deadline.The #LoveSabah campaign hugely exceeded its targets.
[Sales figures are confidential and for judges' information only]
