Digital: Teletext Holidays enjoys a renaissance

Campaign: New Digital Direction for Teletext holidays

Client: Teletext holidays

PR Team: Rachel O'Reilly Communications

Timescale: December 201-=February 2011

Budget: £15.000

Teletext Holidays has been famous for its 'lego brick' graphics on analogue television for nearly two decades. However, with the analogue service closing at the end of last year, Teletext brought in Rachel O'Reilly Communications to reinvent the brand, update the online booking technology and convince travel industry advertisers they should continue to use the brand.

Objectives

- To position Teletext Holidays as a digital brand

- To talk to the travel industry and advertisers about new digital distribution channels

- To promote a wider range of holidays including youth, family and luxury.

Strategy

The PR team created a launch event, with an Apple store theme, for the travel industry.

Hosted at the Louise Blouin Foundation in Shepherd's Bush, the lab-style experience allowed people to test the company's new internet-connected TV (IPTV) service, iPad app and website.

Key travel industry advertisers, senior influencers in travel and journalists attended the launch. A television news package from the event was broadcast on the Teletext Holidays website, while the Travel Weekly site ran the news package exclusively.

A news story about the brand moving from lego brick graphics into the digital age was sold in to business desks and picked up by BBC News 24 and BBC Radio 5 Live.

Teaming up with research agency OnePoll, the comms team created a story about how many holidays people go on during their adult lifetimes and how much they spend on them.

The agency wanted to shift the perception of Teletext Holidays from that of a place for last-minute deals to a site offering a wide range of holidays at home and abroad to suit any age and budget.

Measurement and evaluation

The relaunch story was covered by key trade media including Travel Weekly, TTG, Marketing Week and NMA. TTG editor Daniel Pearce praised the relaunch in his column on 10 December 2010.

Live interviews with Teletext Holidays MD Victoria Sanders were broadcast on BBC Radio 5 Live with Nicky Campbell, BBC News 24 and BBC Fast Track. There were also 87 pieces of coverage in national newspapers including The Daily Telegraph, i, the Daily Mail and The Sun, and online at Virginmedia.com and Thisismoney.com.

Results

Ad revenue on the website is up 20 per cent year on year. By raising the profile of Teletext Holidays, easyJet Holidays, the low-cost airline's new package holiday business, was persuaded to launch exclusively on the site, which also generated more than 60 pieces of coverage.

Traffic to the Teletext Holiday website rose by seven per cent in January 2011 compared with January 2010.

SECOND OPINION

James Brooke MD, Rooster PR

There is no doubt the relaunch of Teletext Holidays was a short-term success. MD Victoria Sanders overhauled the business, enabling it to fight back in the competitive world of online travel agencies (OTAs).

The key components of the PR campaign - launch event, one-to-one briefings and catchy survey - worked effectively, resulting in an immediate splash of coverage.

However, I question how successfully the objective of promoting a wider range of holidays was achieved. While generating further coverage, easyJet Holidays' involvement so soon after the launch only emphasised that Teletext Holidays remains the place to buy low-cost budget holidays. The success of the repositioning can only be accurately judged in the long term and I am concerned by the short time frame of the PR campaign.

Teletext Holidays is one of many OTAs and needs to commit to an ongoing PR campaign. I would argue that the small spike in web traffic has quickly flattened off and the brand is in danger of disappearing under the weight of established players who have a head start in the digital space.

This article was first published on PR Week UK