THE CLIENT

Having been in the industry for the last 37 years, Neilson are one of the leading active holiday companies in the UK. They are award winners, have a wealth of experience and an unrivalled team of experts that know a thing or two about offering a superb range of active holidays.

Whether a seasoned pro or a novice learning the ropes, Neilson are well versed in providing a wide variety of holidays from mountain biking, skiing and snowboarding in the alps to windsurfing, wakeboarding, and sailing in the Med.

THE CHALLENGE

Neilson tasked Brandwave with creating their new Beach Clubs 2013 marketing campaign. They wanted to focus on the customer experience whilst on a Neilson holiday and to hero their loyal customers. Communicating the variety of activities all included within a Neilson holiday would be key to the campaign – from mountain biking and wakeboarding, to sailing and windsurfing lessons, to yoga and the fact that you can also just spend time relaxing in the sun. A fully integrated campaign was required, working across all marketing deliverables from cross track advertising to brochure spreads, online advertising, social media and HTML emails. It also needed to appeal to a broad range of their target demographic, from families, to couples, and groups of friends. Most importantly, the campaign needed to be iconic and instantly identifiable as Neilson, selling the Neilson brand and the reasons that Neilson’s loyal customers return year after year.

THE RESULT

Drawing on our own experiences of the Neilson brand we created the new To Be Neilson campaign.
The campaign focused on the key emotions felt by each of the target markets – mums, dads, teenagers, and kids. The respective strap lines were inspired by the different activities and communicated perfectly how it feels to be excited to hit the water, thrilled to learn new skills and relaxed to be amongst professionals. The strong, yet simple creative template is instantly recognisable as Neilson, it sells the values of the Neilson brand and allows for an integrated campaign which works across all online advertising, print advertising, HTML emails, brochures and cross track advertising on the London Underground.

Neilson have attributed the success of this campaign to the unprecedented growth and above-average sales they have seen at their most crucial sales period of the year, demonstrating a strong ROI and brand building campaign. To Be Neilson will also be a key message in the new brand guidelines and is due be rolled out across many more deliverables and campaigns later in the year…