entered by Wesgro

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to stall international travel, the Wesgro team needed to ensure that Cape Town and the Western Cape remained to of mind for their key international markets – namely the Netherlands, United Kingdom, and German. With safety a chief concern for global travellers, the challenge was to demonstrate how the region was the  perfect antidote to lockdown.

Cape Town and the Western Cape has space – lots of it. But they offer more than just beautiful wide-open spaces. There’s the experience of what it feels like to be here. The eating. The drinking. The sun. The people. The adventure. All of which comes together to offer the perfect antidotes to a locked down Europe. 

Identifying the Neverending Tourists

The team positioned Cape Town and Western Cape as a destination for overall wellness, creating and owning a  distinctive campaign message platform. But they would need the most trustworthy ambassadors to deliver their message, and who better than the ‘Neverending Tourists’ (NETs)? These are people that come to Cape Town on holiday, only to fall in love with the Western Cape, and never leave. By being here for as long as they have, they get under the skin of it, uncovering the best of it and the hidden gems in the region.

To get the message out, the team chose four NETs – two from the Netherlands and two from Germany – to deliver it. Each spoke to a different niche that would incorporate food and wine,  outdoors and adventure, culture and heritage, and family travel, to ensure could capture a highly-engaged audience based on their interests. Using video, AI technology, and editorial content, they humanised their campaign elements and rolled it all out across their digital platforms and targeted partner platforms.

The hero piece for the campaign was a main film featuring all four NETs, highlighting why they came to the region and, more importantly, why they stay. This was complemented by eight shortened cut-downs, which appeared on social media and within a Facebook Messenger bot. 

The messenger bot is the next step in the story – having seen one of our films, the messenger experience allows their audience to navigate pre-programmed content that allows our NETs to tell more of the story, ranging from voice notes to video content, tips and maps. It has the same function as a campaign microsite but will gain substantially more engagement than a typical website.

The impact

Since launching the campaign collateral, the results have been incredible, with high views and engagement. The YouTube video generated over 5.5 million impressions with over 7000 bot clicks, while Facebook generated over 6.5 million impressions, and over 10,000 clicks to bot and more than 381,000 engagements. 100% of users opened the Meet & Greet message, with 94.1% of users clicking through to one of the four NETs – the CTAs are well above the industry benchmark and this speaks to effectiveness of the copy and imagery to elicit a positive user response and encourage a user to continue engaging with the content. The next step is to bring in NETs from the UK, another key market for Cape Town and the Western Cape.