Alternative title: Romance
Brand: Aruba Tourism Authority
CEO: Ronella Tjin Asjoe-Croes
CMO: Sanju Luidens Daryanani
Area Director, North America: Edward Malone
Marketing Manager, North America: Ayerim Lacle Maduro
Agency: Concept Farm
Creative Director: Gregg Wasiak
Creative Director: John Gellos
Strategy Director: John Speers
Account Director: Jessica Lombardo
Account Executive: Christine Ruppert
Published: September 2018
Synopsis:
The Locals Travel Guide to Aruba.
Created by independent agency Concept Farm, the “Authentic Aruba” campaign launches today and highlights one of the destinations’ strongest reasons for visiting – its warm and sunny people. The integrated campaign features dozens of Arubans, making a human connection between “One happy island” and its visitors – a connection today’s experiential traveler craves.
The centerpiece of the campaign features six niche-focused landing pages “hosted” by a different Aruban local – matching audience interests with the activities Aruba offers. Culture, culinary and romance are part of the new push, following the wellness, adventure and family niches that kick-started the campaign in 2017.
“Local storytelling stimulates experiential travel and on-island spend. With Concept Farm’s help, we have unlocked our biggest asset – and one of our best marketing tools: The Aruban people,” said Ronella Tjin Asjoe-Croes, CEO of Aruba Tourism Authority. “Our goal is to innovate sustainably and increase value in tourism and this flows naturally from engaging our Aruban community with tourism.”
John Speers, Strategy & Client Director at Concept Farm says, “We needed to do more than just present activities in a beautiful setting. We needed to highlight the uniqueness of Aruba’s wonderful people and awe-inspiring place. The storytelling drives real emotional engagement and conversion. Our process for this is called the 'Brand Being,' which unearths the human essence of a destination.”
Speers continues, “There’s much talk of ‘engagement’ in the business, but at the end of the day people engage with people not things. Our local-focused content has seen YouTube completion rates over 4x travel benchmarks, 6 million publisher video views, over a million social views with average engagement 87% above Facebook benchmark and click through rates over 8x conventional display advertising.”
Concept Farm’s work for Aruba has led to record-setting visitation increases over the last 5 years with a 10% increase in 2017 alone. North American visitation has grown to nearly 700k per year and Aruba has set the pace for the Caribbean with nearly 85% hotel occupancy rates. Commensurate with those big numbers comes an increase in on-island spend, which is critical as Aruba is the most tourism dependent island nation in the Caribbean. Earlier this year Aruba and Concept Farm won 11 HSMAI Adrian Awards – the most for any destination – for best use of content strategy, virtual reality, social media, video content and the prestigious Pioneer of Visual Storytelling honor.