Butlins - the season of goodwill

In our paper to the Board of Butlins, our resulting strategy outlined a number of key objectives for sponsorship, including a manageable shift in brand perception, showcasing their entertainment offering, as well as providing BTL promotional opportunities. Once these objectives were accepted we set about the task of identifying appropriate solutions and filtering these against KPI’s and other brand criteria.

Our recommendations included two principle platforms. The first was Swimathon, the fundraising national swimming promotion, which takes place in February. Swimathon provided the business with a CSR platform that gave a reason to communicate with families across the UK at a time when summer holidays are being booked.

The second platform was created specifically for Butlins, and based on the premise of the world’s most famous redcoat - Father Christmas. Santa’s grottos, in some of the UK’s busiest shopping malls, with a seasonal daily footfall of nearly 3 million visitors gave Butlins an unusually cost effective platform to reach target consumers, again during the principal holiday booking season. We were retained us to negotiate a multi-year title sponsorship of Swimathon and executively manage the activation of ‘project Redcoat’.

Father Christmas delivered against a number of other key objectives. The sponsorship generated promotional access to Butlins in the shop windows of a number of retailers, carefully selected for the benefit of the brand association for Butlins. In a clever piece of creative leveraging we let shoppers know that the world’s most famous red coat was getting some help from Butlin’s Red Coats, getting closer to customers and showcasing their entertainment capabilities by entertaining children as they queued.

Evaluation of the activity revealed that more than 50% of those sampled had changed their perception of Butlins and almost one quarter would now consider taking a break at Butlins as a result – a great outcome for Butlins. The brand health scores were statistically significantly better on all measures amongst those aware of the sponsorship.

Several years on, Bourne Leisure have announced the launch of its new accommodation on one of its sites, the others to follow, with a higher price per night as intended, the best proof of their confidence that the brand is now in the right place to appeal to their desired target audience.