Minoan Lines

< BACK TO LIST

Exceeding customer expectations
– CLIENT Minoan Lines
- CHANNELS Online Media, Social Media
– PROJECT TIMELINE 6 weeks
– FORESTVIEW ROLE Business & Marketing Consulting, Creative, Social Media, Media Activations

THE GOAL

In the summer of 2018 Minoan Lines added a new route for their newly acquired ship “Santorini Palace”, connecting Heraklion Crete with the heart of the Aegean Sea and the islands of Mykonos, Santorini, Paros and Ios

With the summer holiday period in full swing, ForestView was tasked to create an engaging campaign to help launch the new route with maximum audience engagement and business impact.

THE STRATEGY

Consumer behavior data from multiple sources showed us that the “look to book” period is 2-3 months for international travelers, leading us to focus to the domestic market, since the new route was launched late in the peak season.

We planned around maximum impact in the shortest possible time, using consumer expectations as a key ingredient to accelerate and expand our reach.

9,9M Impressions Total Media Coverage

THE WAY

The campaign worked in 3 stages, specifically targeting last minute / impulse travelers already in Crete, islands within our route or in major cities like Athens.

01 Stage: Meet “Sifis”, the personification of our brand, a kind, warm, adorable Cretan who is ready for adventure. We deployed a video campaign across multiple digital Media, showcasing a “fish out of water” story of our amicable Sifis, as he imbues a bit of Crete to the Cyclades Islands.

02 Stage: We followed up on viewers of our “product” campaign with an online activation. Sifis asked the help of the public to help him plan his trip to the Cyclades Islands and discover new places. The user generated content was compiled in a dynamically expanding travel website and shared in social Media. As a reward for their help, Sifis promised to send them a personal thanks via a traditional Cretan “mantinada” song.

03 Stage: A few days after sending in their travel tips, participants received an unexpected surprise in the inbox. Sifis replied to each of the participants with a personalized video mantinada, referring to them by name and in many cases thanking them for their specific tip. As the videos started to be shared online, this fueled a wave of people that were actively seeking out the campaign, simply to be gifted a “mantinada” themselves. It took ~10 days to receive the first 100 travel tips, but by the end of the campaign, three week later, we had sent out 1.913 mantinades.

The campaign was underpinned by a smart Media strategy, identifying the point of entry of each participant (i.e. the original Video, organic traffic to the tour guide site, clicks from e-mail) and redirected them to other touchpoints of our campaign, ensuring that everyone had experienced both the activation and the main product campaign.

THE RESULTS

Within 6 weeks, from late July until the end of August the results were nothing short of impressive.

9,9M Impressions Total Media Coverage.

35.000 Unique Users in our Campaign Hub

30% Added Reach through Earned Media

~300.000 Extended Reach through Organic Shares of our “mantinades” videos.

~13% of Online Booking Revenue Attributed to the Campaign.

«

»