For Christmas, Devonshire Hotels & Restaurants Group asked Cunning Plan Agency to help them create a festive campaign. The holiday campaign would not only attract attention and participants but also generate business for the silent period after Christmas. James Adam, managing director of Cunning Plan Agency, tells us how they planned and executed the Festive Giveaway Advent calendar. He also lets us in on the stunning results of the campaign.
The agency
Cunning Plan is a full-service agency that helps its clients find their brand voice through strategy, crafting visuals and multi-channel advertising and marketing campaigns. Cunning Plan has been working with destination clients like hotels, shopping centers, and attractions for over a decade. They always look for new ways to engage with the audiences on social media. They’ve built platforms from scratch as well as used other third-party platforms previously.
The brand
Devonshire Hotels & Restaurants Group Limited is a beautiful collection of luxury hotels. You can find their holiday cottages, inns, and restaurants in tranquil and unspoilt locations in Yorkshire & Derbyshire, UK. By enhancing their online presence and staying active on social media the group is working to keep up with modern marketing. They’ve been working with Cunning Plan Agency since last year. The team is also working to refine the brand and build a new website for the group.
Christmas campaign to increase brand awareness and engagement
The main objective of the hotel and restaurant group was to engage with the social audience over the run-up to Christmas. They were also looking to drive repeat business in the new year. “We discussed a number of ideas and options and ultimately chose to create an advent calendar”, says James Adam.
It was an idea they knew would work, but would allow them to put a creative spin on it. Their client was looking to create engaging social media content to increase campaign and brand awareness. This would ultimately improve spend and footfall in the quiet period after Christmas through the prizes that were on offer.
The prizes ranged from an overnight stay for two, discounts on selected hotel stays, two for one lunch, free desserts, etc. Winners had to redeem their prizes at the hotels. This helped to encourage people to visit different locations. Apart from the giveaways, each participant won a direct prize. The agency and the brand wanted every participating user to go away from the advent calendar happy and the more people that entered the better! The giveaways were all completed via a random prize draw.
The campaign – a mix of branded games and giveaways
The 24 Christmas promotions were published in a Promotion Group. To keep every day exciting, the organizers rotated the promotion types between giveaways, games, and quizzes. Each promotion had a different festive theme. The giveaways expectedly performed the best, as participants only had to fill in a form and they were for the highest valued prizes. Out of the other options, the memory games had the most participants. Some of the participants often returned to participate in new promotions.
The team at Devonshire Hotels created a landing page on their website where customers could access the advent calendar. They also shared the new promotion every day on their social media channels. Additionally, they encouraged the participants to share the page once they had entered. This really helped boost reach and the number of engagements.
Organizing a big promotional campaign
Cunning Plan was a first-time user of the Easypromos platform and their campaign was very complex. The agency did a lot of planning to guarantee the success of the campaign. A very detailed spreadsheet with all the competition types, content and dates helped them ensure they didn’t miss anything.
The agency first created one of each promotion type that the client approved. They could then clone them to create the whole advent calendar. “In the new promotions, we just had to edit the questions and imagery which helped speed up the process,” explains James Adam. “It was the first stage that was the hardest but once that was done it was easy to pick up.”
The outcome of the Advent Calendar campaign
The overall outcome was extremely positive. A total of 25,771 users participated and 16,340 of these selected to opt-in to the group’s newsletter. The calendar gained more traction than the planned, so the organizers altered the prizes throughout the campaign to be even bigger and better. “As over half of the people that participated in the advent calendar also opted in to receive the newsletter, the group expanded their database by a substantial amount. They can, therefore, retain that engagement year-round”, explains James Adam.
Testimonial
“The Easypromos platform was very easy to use and did a great job for what we needed. When we hit a challenge with the platform, the support was excellent and every bump was overcome quickly and efficiently. I’m confident that we’ll use the platform again in the future.”
– James Adam –
Managing director of Cunning Plan Agency
Are you thinking to implement Advent Calendars to your next Christmas campaign? It’s never too early to start planning your biggest campaign of the year! Chat with our experienced Support Team in case of doubts and questions.
