Lifts To

Lifts To currently operates across 200 resorts in 14 different countries spanning Europe and North America, offering safe and sound airport transfers to 70,000 holiday markers per season. Working in partnership with blue-chip travel brands such as SunWeb, TUI and GolfBreaks, Lifts To has already begun building a solid foundation of loyal custom.

The award-winning company has mapped an ambitious global growth strategy and set its vision on becoming the most trusted marketplace of reliable passenger transfers, in a sector where customer dissatisfaction seems to permeate. Having recently secured £650,000 from the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund, Lifts To are looking to rapidly increase their market share in an industry set to be worth £17.1 billion by 2023. To do this, the company will need to promote the benefits they offer in areas where their competition falls short: local knowledge, transparent prices and vehicles fit for purpose.

Specialising in the sort of trips that require especially cumbersome luggage; ski, sea and golf, the Lifts To team approached Glorious Creative with a brief for an adaptable campaign concept that could be translated across these three areas. It was key that the benefits of Lifts To were communicated clearly in the creative outputs, pitching the company above the competition in a way that could be understood at a glance. A customer-centric approach needed to dictate the design and messaging, aimed at the independent traveller who books each element of a trip, as opposed to opting for the first package deal they find or the transfer offered by the flight company, for example.

The challenge for us was to design a campaign for Ski Lifts specifically, that had personality in a sector that tends to be quite predictable. The creative assets also needed to be suitable for activity across a number of online and offline marketing channels. These included paid social, email, display advertising, the Ski Lifts website and print collateral. As a creative agency, we wanted to provide the client with outputs that had the potential to really cut through the noise and give them a solid platform from which to promote their great offering.

We began working on the brief by thoroughly researching the pain points and triggers that encouraged or deterred customers to book their ski transfers. As part of the process the team ran brand sentiment analysis on appropriate social media platforms to really unearth what irked customers when operators failed to meet expectations.

Once the insight was gathered, the findings were formalised and become the roots for an authentic advertising campaign. These truths on which we hinged the outputs would not only resonate with potential customers, but also would also demonstrate what to expect from Ski Lifts as the transfer company of choice:

•5-Star customer service and quality guarantee
•Fair prices with no hidden costs
•Extensive network of experienced drivers with in-depth local knowledge
•Quality of vehicles, fit for purpose in transporting luggage such as skis, golf clubs or surf boards
•The company’s ability to react positively to unforeseen circumstances such as flight delays or cancellations
•Ease of the booking process, taking away pressure from the designated group organiser

Although this gave us a solid direction for the trajectory of the creative outputs, we were mindful that another core aspect to the campaign was elevating Ski Lifts above the competition. Conducting competitor research meant we were able to identify a style of creative that we felt could disrupt the market and tune into consumers. Feeding back to the client, our design team suggested the creative outputs needed to convey personality delivered through humour, along with integrity and empathy.

Using storyboards, the Glorious team worked on creating a number of situations you as the traveller, wouldn’t want to find yourself in. The inference being that Ski Lifts is the one sure way of avoiding such scenarios.

Knowing that the designs needed to be leveraged on humour, we adopted a distinct illustration style created by Simon Henshaw. The drawings were strong enough to sit well on static content, but yet with enough depth to be brought to life effectively with the animation skills of our creative partners at DoodleDo Motion.

The text featured in the social media ads was a core part of the design. By annotating the illustrations with humorous, short one-liners we were able to effectively give the illustration context and set the scene. The headlines used in each output worked in communicating clearly the core message and the call-to-action that sat behind it. We also felt that it was important to thread company stats (transfers in 14 countries across 200 resorts) and seals of approval throughout the content, given that another objective was supporting positive brand sentiment.

As a design agency, the team at Glorious are always conscious to ensure that campaigns created have shelf-life and the potential to live on in future campaigns of cross-channel activity. Adapting the outputs across various media formats was validation that we had achieved this for the client, who have now adopted the designs for their marketing strategy during peak ski-season.

The Lift-To team has measured the performance of the new artwork being delivered across Instagram and Facebook, reporting that Click-Through-Rates are now 50% higher than the platform average. Using previous campaigns to benchmark this success, they went on to say these results are 22% higher than those they had been seeing. Driving increased traffic to the Lift-To website via engaging content was a core objective for the campaign, so it’s fantastic to hear the content is hitting targets.