How The PC Agency skilfully crafted a multichannel marketing campaign, The Real Deal, effectively leveraging network partnerships and digital platforms to drive (and redistribute) tourism in Kenya on behalf of Kenya Tourism Board.

Consumers are demanding more authentic, immersive experiences from travel brands. They want to get under the skin of a destination and come back knowing more about its people and culture. The Real Deal campaign responds to this trend.

Working together with Kenya Tourism Board (KTB), The PC Agency launched this multichannel marketing campaign and leveraged strong network partnerships, digital platforms, personalisation technology, and a boutique microsite to drive and distribute tourism in Kenya by promoting adventurous pursuits in new destinations.

It served as a crucial step in the destination marketing strategy, aiming to attract new and younger audiences, including female travellers, solo travellers, families, and millennials while redistributing visitors across the country.

The Approach

The PC Agency coordinated a multi-channel marketing campaign across key European markets on behalf of KTB, using creative ways to increase awareness and desire for activities beyond the traditional safari experience.

The goal of KTB was to attract a younger audience interested in new, more adventurous ways to experience a destination, and to help redistribute visitors across the country, providing more benefits to lesser-known destinations – and reducing strain on areas coping with over-tourism. The campaign ran across four key source markets, including the UK and Ireland, France and Germany.

On behalf of agencies across Europe, The PC Agency curated a campaign incorporating video adverts on YouTube, paid social media, Spotify adverts, Sojern native and video advertising, as well as a content hub with The Independent.

Utilising digital channels helped to maximise budgets and enable results to be tracked all the way through to a tour operator landing page. The campaign also incorporated hyper-personalisation technology, identifying users already interested in travel, providing a smarter way to reach the target audience.

All adverts were directed through a bespoke microsite created for The Real Deal campaign. The PC Agency, alongside its TLN partners at GroupExpression and KPRN, utilised their strong connections with leading European tour operators, Alfred and Audley Travel, FTI Group, Newmarket Holidays, Trailfinders, and Visiteurs to source offers for this microsite.

To further spread awareness of the campaign, The PC Agency created a press release and pitched it to their media contacts, resulting in coverage appearing in trade titles, including Breaking Travel News, Selling Travel and TTG.

 The overall aim for this campaign was to promote KTB’s new message and offering to new audiences. As the imagery used was new to European consumers, delivering this to a wide audience was important. KPIs were set around consumer impressions and driving traffic to the campaign’s microsite.

Ultimately, the tourism board measures success in visitor arrivals so it was important to reach a quality audience that engaged with these new experiences and went on to make an enquiry. Engagement metrics like dwell time, click-through rates and leads generated were also measured.

Key aspects to The PC Agency’s approach:

 The PC Agency acted as the lead agency for this campaign, coordinating all activity across different markets and channels.

This worked well to ensure the campaign messaging was consistent across all markets. This hub-and-spoke model was adopted by KTB in 2021 and has proved an efficient way of managing international communications and marketing activity.

 Incorporating a call to action into the campaign was essential to ensure that the ROI could be measured. The PC Agency team and partner agencies, GroupExpression and KPRN, worked with tour operator partners to achieve this. Having this functionality within the microsite enabled the team to capture consumer interest and encourage them to make a booking as well as support trade partners by generating leads.

The PC Agency took a holistic approach to the campaign, running press and trade fam trips alongside the advertising activity.

The Results

The multichannel approach recommended by The PC Agency worked well to reach the right audience with the new experiences that the tourism board wanted to promote as part of its Real Deal campaign. Advertising on YouTube and Spotify worked particularly well, with 41% of listeners reached on Spotify aged between 25 – 34, proving these channels worked well to reach the younger audience required by KTB. The marketing tools utilised throughout the campaign provided a means to deliver creative stills and video content to a new audience at scale. The campaign received 80% more impressions than predicted – showing a strong appetite for these types of experiences within the target source markets.

• Generated 841 sales leads for The PC Agency’s tour operator partners
• According to Sojern data, viewers of the campaign generated 1,468 searches for holidays to Kenya with an average length of stay of 24 days.

Other Campaign Highlights Include:

• Recorded over 14 million impressions across the duration of the campaign, exceeding campaign target by 88.9%.
• Effectively engaged with the target audience, with 49% of UK consumers reached through our hyper-targeting adverts aged between 25-44. 41% of those who heard our Spotify adverts were aged 24 – 34, again demonstrating the effectiveness of this campaign in reaching a younger audience.
• Achieved average dwell time of 73 seconds on independent.co.uk content hub, exceeding their benchmark by 23 seconds.
• Recorded impressive average completion rate for Spotify ads of 96.68%, exceeding target of 85%.

The X-Factor

The PC Agency is one of the world’s most sought-after luxury travel PR and marketing consultancies. Their team of 35 travel specialists have excellent up-to-date knowledge of the media and travel trade makeup in the UK – and that gives them the edge on competitors.

They’ve consistently been recognised for their work and have been awarded PR Week’s Most Influential Travel and Tourism Consultancy for seven years running. Other recent accolades include reaching the finals of the 2023 Travel Bulletin Star Awards, TTG Travel Industry Awards, and Travel Marketing Awards.

Client Testimonial

“The PC Agency has a good understanding of the market and great insights from a media perspective, which were beneficial in showcasing and positioning Kenya. It was a pleasure working with the entire PC team. Their contribution and timely support on initiatives to drive awareness and visitors from these markets contributed to our success in these markets.”
Magline Jeruto, Marketing Officer – Europe