Marketing Communications

110 CHAPTER 3 HOW MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS WORK

Table 3.6 Image of Club Med in target group (those who know Club Med)

Also acknowledged by target group Average Less acknowledged by target group

Personality Active

Full of life

Dynamic

Adventurous

Friendly

Satisfaction Enables getting to know new people

Creates a festive, happy atmosphere

Stimulates new experiences

Creates an atmosphere

where I can forget my

worries

Handles everything and makes sure

I don’t have to worry

Offer Has a lot of sport activities

Has an all-inclusive formula

Separate activities for the whole family

A well-known and respected chain

Moreover, as was also found in the qualitative study, Club

Med was perceived as an upmarket version of UCPA, an

image that Club Med definitely does not want (Table 3.6).

Not knowing Club Med and the characteristics of its offer

appeared to be the main reason not to consider the brand

(Figure 3.15).

A campaign to put Club Med on

the map again

In 2011 the company decided to redress the lack of con-

sideration and misperceptions about Club Med by means

of a marketing communications campaign. The campaign

was targeted at the affluent Flemish families with children

younger than 12. The objectives were set out to be reached

in three stages, as follows:

1. Take away the barriers to consideration of Club Med as
   a travel organisation.


2. Reinforce the uniqueness of the brand.


3. Reinforce word of mouth.

A further ambition was to become an iconic brand by 2013.

Derived from these three pillars, the following specific

objectives were formulated:

   Maintain brand awareness at least at the same level of

the competitors.

   The image of the brand should improve, more specifically

on the following key attributes:

• Happy atmosphere


• Experience new things


• Safe and secure


• Closer to my family


• Discovery


• Feel unique

   Improvement of the price perception – Club Med should

be perceived as relatively expensive.

   Improvement of the value-for-money perception.

   Improvement of product quality perception.

The campaign used a combination of traditional mass

media and online tools. A billboard teaser campaign

was supplemented by inserts and ads in a number of

major newspapers and banners on selected Internet sites.

A PR campaign targeting travel journalists was rolled

out and a direct mailing was sent to key prospects. All

these efforts were geared at attracting prospects to the

Internet site http://www.ontdekclubmed.be (‘discover club med’)

and to invite people to share their thoughts on social

media.

A campaign well received by the

target group

Various measures indicate that the campaign was well

processed by the target group. Since its launch, the website

has received 33 000 unique visitors who visit the site on

average for one minute (Figure 3.16). Visitor peaks are seen

as a result of campaign efforts (mailings, newspaper inserts,

etc.). By the end of March 2011, the Facebook page had

more than 130 000 visitors and 6800 fans. Word of mouth

on Facebook, blogs, etc., evolved positively during the

campaign period. The evolution of word-of-mouth quality

during the campaign is shown in Figure 3.17.

The campaign in the newspaper De Morgen scored the

best ever of the 300 campaigns tested for this newspaper.

Three out of four respondents saw the ad and 94% could

attribute it to the campaign, leading to a useful score of

72% (Figure 3.18). Another newspaper ad scored a recog-

nition of 54%, a correct attribution of 72%, and hence a

useful score of 39%, well above the average of 27% for all

the ads in this newspaper.

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