Client

TourRadar

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Strategy
Mode

Creative
Mode

Capabilities utilized

Marketing Audit & Strategy Development • Digital Campaign Planning and Reporting • Instant Experience Design

Capabilities utilized

Brand Strategy / Creative Production / Marketing Deployment / Branding

Client background

What they were looking for:

TourRadar came looking for a video campaign to launch their new Adventure category in the guided travel market. While they chose another agency’s humorous video concept over Congruent’s heartfelt pitch, they liked Congruent’s strategy. We proposed segmenting the message to different audiences and deploying sequential campaigns to drive more qualified consideration of booking travel with TourRadar.

What we found:

TourRadar had a hard time converting younger travelers from viewers of their YouTube content to actual customers. They hoped that a more entertaining approach to branding would drive more active consideration for their brand. We aligned these hopes with some new creative and legacy creative to A/B test brand tone and audiences that would influence TourRadar’s 2022 relaunch.

Results

The opportunity to test new creative with a variety of cuts and placements yielded some great data for the future. The humorous creative drove high view rates with an audience TourRadar struggled to conquer in the past, and the heartfelt creative drove the strongest clickthrough rate.

How we did it

Unique
Challenges:

We were responsible for deploying a media strategy using creative (“D. Llama”) we did not believe fit the strategic goals of the campaign. We still deployed the creative to find an audience who would resonate, and we gathered as much insight as possible to empower future strategic decisions.

Marketing
Opportunities:

We placed media on YouTube pre-roll to segment our audiences based on who would most likely resonate with the creative. We also deployed messages sequentially, so if a user skipped one type of ad, we’d serve them an ad with the opposite tone to see if they watched it. This allowed us to determine if the user didn’t like the creative or ads in general. To drive engagement with TourRadar and present an easier shopping experience, we created Instant Experiences so users could browse their dream destinations (while capturing data that helped find stronger audiences).

Messaging and
Placements:

We analyzed the market data and found that “D. Llama” drew stronger views with a younger, less affluent shoppers while “Adventure Awaits” resonated with the older, more affluent shoppers who historically transacted well with TourRadar. Older buyers showed a moderate view rate for “D. Llama” (57% compared to 45%), but the CTR was lower for than “Adventure Awaits,” indicating “D.Llama” just provided entertainment value. “D. Llama” drove an impressive 70% view rate in the A/B test, however, view rate slipped to 37% over the course of the wider launch campaign. “Adventure Awaits” only showed a 66% view rate in the A/B test, but as the campaign delivered wider, view rate only slipped to 49%. “Adventure Awaits” drew the strongest CTR. Instant Experiences data proved very beneficial. Using lookalike audiences mapped to Instant Experience shoppers, we lowered link click CPC 50-65% compared to TourRadar’s other campaigns ($0.94 vs. $1.93-2.49). This audience also delivered the only directly attributed sales from any of the brand pushes during this period.

The brand process

TourRadar was relaunching their branding and messaging to focus on a new market. We knew we needed to have a laser focus on the correct demographics, personas, and placements to help them achieve success.

TourRadar

Our Favorite Campaigns

The Wisdom of D. Llama‍

Driving Insight: A new brand calls for a new brand avatar.