Visit Kent

2FOR1

Zest was appointed by Visit Kent and Southeastern in January 2008, on a rolling three year contract, to manage their summer campaign, jointly promoting travelling to Kent's tourist attractions by train.

The first year saw the campaign running for 8 weeks, from late June to early August, targeted families, couples and professionals living in London, encouraging them to leave the hustle and bustle of the capital and visit the sights and sounds of Kent.

Various eye-catching posters which played on the concept of 'time' were displayed on London trains, stations, on the tube and in newspapers and magazines.

The concept 'It's About Time more Londoners visited The Garden of England' paired with the 'travel by train' message gave our audience tangible examples of the ease of travel. Research findings revealed that 30% of respondents recalled seeing the campaign (up 6% from 2007), 24% of respondents mentioned Kent as the destination as opposed to 15% in 2007, 14% mentioned Southeastern as opposed to 0% in 2007, and 48% now believe Kent is 'a place to go by train' compared to 25% in 2007, with 45% now saying they would travel by train.

Moving into the second year of the campaign we faced the challenge of a reduced budget, paired with a requirement to widen the focus of the message from day breaks to also include 'staycations' (tourists travelling by train, staying one night or more in Kent, and returning by train).

To give people a physical reason to travel and to motivate action – whilst keeping in mind the reduction in budget, - we needed to adopt a much more tactical approach. We worked with Southeastern to further extend their well known 2FOR1 offering, compiling and publishing over 50 Kent lead 2FOR1 offers, taking in visitor attractions, retail, leisure, food, activities, bike/boat hire, etc.

The 2FOR1 approach continued into 2010, where yet again we saw further budget reductions but the tactical approach lent itself perfectly to moving further online, seeding vouchers and deals through the likes of Money Saving Expert, vouchercodes.com, myvouchercodes.co.uk, hotukdeals.co.uk, voucherexpress.co.uk and mobile apps such as Voucher Cloud (mobile App). Letterbox drops and in-station commuter activity also supported the further distribution of the voucher booklets.

Overall results saw 48.8% of respondents claiming that the 2FOR1 offer persuaded them to make the trip to Kent. 32.8% said they were planning on visiting anyway and the offer was an added incentive and 11.2% said it was the only reason they'd visited Kent.