Make skiers melt

Winter sports resorts, which are very dependent on the economy and the weather, are finding it increasingly difficult: it's not just that winter no longer seems to be reliable. Due to the strong franc, many skiers also prefer to go skiing in Germany or Austria, or they spontaneously decide to ski for just a few hours in good weather instead of committing to a destination for a whole week as they used to and taking the weather as it comes. Skiing is becoming less and less predictable. In particular, new customers visiting a ski resort for the first time are increasingly staying away - even in the Weisse Arena, the Flims, Laax, Falera piste network. This is why the Weisse Arena Gruppe (WAG) ran the "Happy up" campaign in the 2012/2013 season. The lead agency was Rod Kommunikation from Zurich. The aim of the campaign was to boost cross-media lift ticket sales and increase interest in longer-term stays. In addition, potential new customers were to be addressed, especially in the target groups of families and freestylers.

Click record thanks to video advertising

The campaign also included pre-roll video ads, in which the advertising message is placed before the editorial video content. As soon as the user clicks on the desired content, the video ad is played automatically and a countdown shows when the editorial content starts. Because the user cannot simply skip the video ad, advertising effectiveness is guaranteed. WAG worked with two partners to implement this part of the campaign: Explido, a German agency for digital marketing and sales, and Exponential Interactive, a provider of advertising intelligence and creative rich media solutions. For the in-stream advertising Photo: Keystone, Exponential used AdoTube's Polite Pre-Roll. Exponential created pre-rolls that were tailored to the two target groups with different motifs. They showed scenes from everyday life in Laax and were primarily used to build up the image. The pre-rolls also contained three call-to-action buttons: If a prospective customer pressed one of the elements, they were forwarded directly to the corresponding offer on the Laax website.

87 percent new unique users

WAG had great success with the pre-roll video ads: it placed specific product offers and gained 87% new unique users for Laax.com. Almost 190,000 ad impressions were delivered to the families target group, and around 273,000 to the freestylers target group. The dwell time for the families target group was 24 seconds, and 23 seconds for the freestylers target group - even though the video ad could be skipped after 15 seconds. The call-to-action buttons were also successful: The video ad encouraged 1150 users to click on the "Family Deal 7 Nights" offer and find out more about it. 1030 users were interested in the Freestyler offer "3 nights with 3-day lift ticket". "This measure enabled us to increase our onsite values and successfully approach new customers," says Markus Schleger, Online Media Planner at Explido. Kristian Paasila, Team Leader Web Management and E-Commerce at WAG, is also very satisfied: "We were able to combine our videos, which focus on brand awareness, with specific product offers, and we were able to do this specifically for two very different target groups. The results far exceeded our expectations."

Anne-Friederike Heinrich