Why Barbuda tourism has an ‘off the beaten track’ media strategy

The Media Plan

For an advertiser that needs to manage demand and customer expectations carefully, a careful targeting and contextual approach is being used in its media planning and buying.

Barbuda will launch its first solo tourism campaign promoting it as an “exclusive” destination to interested travellers later this month.

Bountiful Cow and Motel were lead media and creative agencies respectively for the Antigua and Barbuda tourism authority (ABTA) on the campaign.

Antigua’s sister island has a population of 1,500 people and can only be reached by boat, helicopter or an eight-seater plane.

The campaign aims to raise awareness of Barbuda as an “off the beaten track island escape” but not “beg” people to visit, given its infrastructure and small size.

Both islands have been rebuilding after Hurricane Irma hit five years ago and the tourism advertising campaign will run from today in the UK, US and Canada.

Chetan Murthy, head of strategy at Bountiful Cow, told The Media Leader that the campaign did not lend itself to a broadcast above-the-line (ATL) media strategy due to the exclusivity of Barbudan travel.

Instead, Bountiful Cow’s media strategy for the campaign encompasses geo-targeted digital out-of-home, segmented social and travel media publications.

Murthy said: “We adopted a funnelled targeting approach, which uses press and OOH opportunities to drive awareness and then focuses on digital activity to hero Motel’s beautifully shot video assets, generating desirability and engagement around Barbudan travel.”

The press activations include full-page ads in Conde Nast Traveller and Wanderlust magazine to target “high-end travellers”, while out-of-home sites will be geo-targeted at broad interest groups like the Antiguan and Barbudan diaspora community living in and around Leicester.

Digital strategy includes contextual and keyword targeting on YouTube and relevant interest segmentation on Facebook and Instagram to narrow down travellers who already have an interest in travelling to these Caribbean islands.

People who had already confirmed they were travelling to Antigua were also encouraged to extend their trip to include Barbuda via customer relationship management (CRM) and “lookalike targeting” on Facebook, Instagram and TripAdvisor with videos of the island’s pink sands on the 11 Mile Beach with sounds of lapping waves and its national bird the Frigate.

The country’s tourism minister, Charles Fernandez, added his seal of approval to the strategy behind the campaign. He said: “This campaign cleverly helps manage expectations because if interested travellers can’t book a flight or room, they can’t complain that we didn’t warn them!”