How lastminute.com’s Influencer-Driven Pivot Redefined Travel Marketing

Ruchika> The 'It's Never Too Late to Book a Holiday' campaign was always envisioned as a multimedia initiative across various channels, with influencers playing distinct roles. This strategy aimed to enhance talkability and embed the campaign's core idea into everyday culture, beyond the travel community. By collaborating with influencers outside the traditional travel sphere and leveraging their organic humour, the campaign sought to break through the sea of sameness and engage the target audience in a more relatable way.

 

Ruchika> In order to stand out in consumers' social feeds, we purposefully went out to select creators that weren't your typical social influencers. We wanted creators with rich but niche communities, known for their creativity and authenticity. The idea was for them to create something in collaboration with us that felt very natural to their audience, with enough licence for them to inject their own humour into the final posts, whilst landing the campaign idea.

 

 

Ruchika> These playful activations work so well for lastminute.com because humour has always been a core element of the brand's personality, making these campaigns feel authentic and aligned with the brand's identity. The choice of creators, known for their organic style of humour, ensures that the content feels natural and engaging rather than forced or scripted. And the seamless fit between the brand's tone and the creators' style not only enhances authenticity but also resonates with audiences, making the content more relatable and shareable. Moreover, the lighthearted nature of these activations mirrors the essence of last-minute travel, reinforcing the brand's promise that it's never too late to book a holiday.

 

 

Jonathan> That lastminute.com has a deep-rooted desire to stand out and isn’t afraid to do things differently to outsmart rather than outspend the competition. This is something we heard the team say at the start of our journey together, however many clients say this but don’t follow through. lastminute.com have pushed us to be bold just as much as we have pushed them, which has led to a really exciting partnership.

 

Jonathan> It’s important because we wanted this idea of ‘It’s Never Too Late to Book a Holiday’ to become part of an everyday belief. The reason we picked these talented content creators was to leverage their talent to bring this very simple idea to life in ways that perhaps we hadn’t even thought of.

 

Jonathan> Winning the pitch and the moment the client said ‘we love that toilet idea’.

 

 

Jonathan> How we make this one idea locally relevant across markets. We overcame it by doing a piece of research to understand the key places that people are likely to book a last minute holiday, and picked scenarios that would land in each market without explanation. It shows how a universal idea has the ability to flex and be locally relevant.

 

Ruchika and Jonathan> Watch this space!