Switzerland Tourism also accompanies guests through the media right into their vacations

Covid-19 put the tourism industry in Switzerland in an exceptional situation: foreign guests stayed away for months, locals were not supposed to travel in the country. At least the latter has been possible again since June, which is why Switzerland invites you to take a vacation.

To give the Swiss population a better understanding of Switzerland as a vacation destination, Switzerland Tourism developed a media concept with the Sir Mary agency: When the national lockdown was over, more than 1,000 subjects with different focus, flexible address and individual KPIs were played out in a multi-stage process.

The fundamental conviction here was: Communication must start quickly, broadly, and energetically; in the next step, it must address typical needs - and finally, it must make personal, concrete offers.

Start with a "big bang

Based on the new communication bracket developed by Wirz, "We need Switzerland." therefore began a national campaign on June 5, 2020, initially focusing on high visibility and strong contact dose. "Switzerland Tourism wanted to send a strong signal for Swiss tourism. We could only achieve this with high advertising pressure," says Fabian Habisreutinger, one of the main people responsible for the media campaign at Sir Mary.

All of the country's relevant news sites were used extensively, and "We need Switzerland" was established as a communication umbrella. The claim was also seen on TV, on posters and in the most important print media, accompanied by impressions from the country's most beautiful regions.

At the same time, innovative solutions were used on the social media platforms: For example, Switzerland Tourism launched the first Swiss TikTok campaign and a Pinterest quiz to familiarize a social media-savvy audience with "We need Switzerland." to a social media-savvy audience.

Eight personas, eight needs

The broad communication of the claim "We need Switzerland." was followed shortly afterwards by concrete inputs that addressed the very different travel needs of the Swiss population. The basis was formed by eight specially designed personas - city travelers or sports enthusiasts were among them, as were people for whom wellness, hygiene and safety or romance are particularly important.

"On the media channels popular with these personas, subjects were shown that perfectly matched their presumed preferences," explains André Hefti, Marketing Director at Switzerland Tourism. The subjects were tested in advance for various parameters using an AI tracking tool from Sir Mary and then created automatically. The content is also made available to Switzerland Tourism's foreign markets in an adapted form.

The aim of all this was to direct people to the "I need Switzerland." platform, the specially designed landing page on Myswitzerland.ch. Here, too, the predefined personas played an important role - and ensured in the background that the different users of the platform were each shown individual content.

Performance marketing: tracking with innovative dashboard

The customer journey of the individual users was mapped by Sir Mary on a specially developed "dashboard": Depending on the phase of the campaign and the focused persona, Switzerland Tourism was able to track in real time how the individual target groups of the campaign behaved, how the core message was received and where what needed to be optimized. In this way, "scatter losses" were minimized, advertising media adapted and content on landing pages optimized; addressing users became more precise with each passing day. Thanks to the flexible architecture of the dashboard, it was also possible to create specific reports for campaign partners on a daily basis.

The dashboard forms the basis for the performance-based final act of the campaign, which is currently running. Based on user behavior, Switzerland Tourism is currently targeting digital offers for vacations in Switzerland. Switzerland Tourism knows which users were inspired by which advertising material - and thus has the perfect basis for a "follow-up".

The result: Very positive interim balance

At Switzerland Tourism, those responsible are very satisfied with the results of the campaign so far: "Within a few days, the campaign was able to achieve a net reach of 4.5 million, and in the following weeks, within this net reach, the frequency was increased to eight OTS, thus ensuring a sustainable advertising impact," says André Hefti of Switzerland Tourism. The campaign is continuously optimized and the findings shared internally. In this way, many other campaigns benefit from the learnings.

André Hefti continues: "The fact that clever media strategies work is also shown, for example, by the first figures on the booking platform Swisshotels.com, where visits are 300 percent above the previous year and the number of bookings significantly exceeds the budgeted volume.