February 9, 2018
As global travel continues to flourish, airlines are smartly offering free stopovers to ambitious travelers and turning midway hubs into destinations themselves. Visit Finland, the destination marketing organization representing the country, teamed up with us to launch a digital marketing campaign. As part of the StopOver Finland project, the campaign capitalized on a flight stopover component with Finnair, tapping into Finland’s location at the crossroads of Asia and Europe to attract visitors to Finland.
So, just how did we integrate the unique stopover offering?
The flight stopover was a tactic that grew out of larger marketing objective to raise awareness of Finland’s various landscapes and less visited regions. To accomplish this, our digital media experts harnessed pre-campaign data insights to set-up an effective campaign approach. We analyzed our first-party data and determined that Finland’s feeder markets of Japan, Britain, Hong Kong, and the U.S., had potential for growth.
The digital campaign included display media on Expedia sites in those target countries, showcasing messaging to potential passengers on the targeted stopover routes through Finland, highlighting that those routes are the shortest. And knowing that consumers in their feeder markets were searching for premier city destinations in Europe, like Berlin and Paris, the campaign cleverly targeted these travelers’ searches.
The stopover itself allowed travelers to layover in Finland for up to 5 days for no extra charge. With such a compelling offer, travelers now had even more incentive to book their flights to Europe through Finland. The display media linked to an engaging microsite with alluring imagery, a map of Finland that shows what there is to do by region, and video content that immerses visitors in authentic Finnish experiences. All this content is displayed as part of Visit Finland’s branding, skillfully and consistently illustrating that visitors can experience all that Finland has to offer through a quick and easy stopover.
With these elements in place, the campaign successfully promoted the StopOver Finland initiative combined with building awareness of Finland’s various landscapes and less visited regions—creating one unified message. The culmination of these efforts saw a staggering 45:1 return on ad spend while also realizing a 30-50 percent range increase in stopover flights. They were able to shift market share from their competitors and extend the reach of the Finland destination brand to new travelers. See the full campaign story here.
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