Destination Marlborough

Creative Strategy – Advertising – Design – Finished Art – Production Supervision
We worked with: Special Ad Service (Creative) | The Digital Cafe (Media) | Fox&Co (Motion Design)

The earthquakes that rocked Kaikoura in 2016, created an ‘earthquake’ of their own, for Destination Marlborough.

A significant majority of their domestic visitors came from Christchurch / Canterbury. But with SH1 closed for over a year, the earthquakes turned a 3 hour drive, into a 10 hour one… and effectively turned off the Canterbury tap, for the region.

With MBIE and Regional Council support, Destination Marlborough commissioned a campaign to replace the Canterbury visitors who couldn’t get there, with the North Island visitors, for whom Marlborough was (still) a single short flight away.

However our North Island audience overwhelmingly saw Marlborough as a summer destination… not a winter one. With the campaign scheduled to hit market just before the winter travel season, we were essentially asking for a change of plans… or a spontaneous ‘extra weekend.’

And instead of driving increased visitation over months and years… we needed to make a clear impact in market, in a matter of weeks. It wasn’t enough just to sell the benefits of Marlborough – we had to give them a reason to visit ‘right now’.