Virgin Holidays’ customer and marketing director, Claire Cronin, knows a thing or two about thinking outside the box.

Under her steer, the tour operator’s most recent campaign and accompanying advert, Seize the Holiday, was crowned Marketing Week’s campaign of the year.

Its success was largely thanks to its innovative format as the world’s first live-streamed TV advert, broadcast from 18 different locations around the world.

The advertisement was also pushed out on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, promoting the hashtag SeizeTheHoliday.

“The sheer scale of ambition and excitement around Seize the Holiday makes me very proud. It’s my career highlight,” Cronin says.

Cronin adds that it marked Virgin Holidays’ new brand positioning and a move away from celebrities, instead focusing on
“real people on holiday”.

“In April last year we ran a piece of research to find out about customers’ evolving habits,” says Cronin.

“We discovered that when people are asked where they want to go, their response is almost always somewhere far-flung and exotic.

“Then when they were asked where they are next planning on going on holiday, the answer was often Spain, or even the UK. People have aspirations for long-haul but they aren’t taking the plunge.”

Cronin adds that the research proved interesting in revealing the role of Virgin Holidays in 2017.

“Our job was to de-risk the holiday and to do it with flair and confidence. The goal was to use the customer insight to encourage people to take the plunge and to jolt them out of their current attitude.”

Building desire

Devised alongside creative agency AMV, Cronin says rolling out the advert involved a three-month intensive planning process. The airing was timed to establish “softer ground” for the peaks period by building customer desire in September, and then encouraging more people to book in January.

The main challenges arose from the advert’’s live format. “We wanted to include lots of destinations so we could flip away from the action if something went wrong,” Cronin explains.

“We also worked with a crew who were prepared to react when something unexpected happened, and sent our production team out a few weeks in advance to mitigate risks.”

The risks paid off, with the advert generating the highest ever level of traffic to the Virgin Holidays site in its 31-year history.

“We doubled the number of people booking store appointments in September, and bookings are up substantially on the website too, by 38% year-on-year,” says Cronin.

Speaking about the challenges that travel companies face in 2017, Cronin says the answer lies in innovation.

“Travel is sacrosanct to customers; they don’t want to give it up. Today, they will shop around for the best deals even more, so we have to fight to get the best value for them.

“Customers don’t necessarily want the cheapest deal – most people spend their budget, not under.

“Our job is to be the chief value engineer for the customer, and champion their needs, while bringing them the best possible experience for their budget.”