The challenge

Visit Wales wanted to address audience perceptions that Wales doesn’t offer anything particularly exciting for a family holiday. I needed to show that Wales is perfect for family holidays by demonstrating how it delivers truly special, memorable holiday experiences.

The solution

Research that I commissioned showed that active families love holidays that provide learning opportunities – as well as fun – for their children. Based on these insights, I worked with Visit Wales to create five experiences that really demonstrated the enjoyment parents get from seeing their kids have new experiences on holiday. We then produced videos with five high profile blogger families that showed this in action. We also created companion Trueview ads with the bloggers, promoting a competition to win a family break in Wales.

The creative

The idea of adventure and fun for kids is often tied to dressing up and role play. Each of the experiences designed for our family bloggers featured them becoming ‘holiday heroes – getting kitted out or dressing up for their big adventure. I selected bloggers with children of different ages to showcase activities for families of all ages. Using bloggers meant the videos felt truly authentic and credible. I worked with Visit Wales’ production agency partner to recce appropriate experiences and helped direct the shoots. These included a day as a zoo keeper for 9-year-old Flea at Folly Farm zoo, a chance to be princesses at Conwy Castle for 6-year-old twins Bessie and Alice and a family day of muddy action and adventure at the Bear Grylls Survival School for the Family Adventure project.

We’d agreed KPIs for the project of 20,000 “hard responses” in the form of sign-ups through Twitter, email or Facebook, as well as increasing traffic to VisitWales.com. We smashed these targets by 500% and delivered 141,000 new visitors to the website.