Our UK Data & Analytics team analysed category demand, search seasonality, post-pandemic customer behaviour shifts, and sales channel preferences using data from Google Trends, social listening, customer booking patterns, and Nielsen competitor spends. 

We came to the conclusion that the problem was that our media wasn't speaking to the category, with the media strategy in place at that point in time doing a good job harvesting demand with performance media, however not contributing to generating demand for Celebrity Cruises.

We uncovered two insights that would be our compass to success:

1. A strong positive correlation between offline Share of Voice and Share of Search, highlighting the importance of high reaching media such as TV in gaining back market share. 

2. A shift in demand seasonality post-pandemic, indicating the need for a wholly new investment phasing and a more even investment approach throughout the year.

Using the evidence from our analysis, we prepared a water-tight case and together, we agreed to make three monumental changes:

1. Casting the net wider and going after all people interested in cruising versus narrow addressable audience segments

2. Reintroducing TV based on audience consumption and CPP analysis 

3. Revising the budget allocation through the funnel - ending the bottom-up approach and shifting the weighting so that upper funnel would get c. 65% of the investment and aligning with the new seasonality by ensuring sure Q2 & 3 were heavily supported vs going dark in ATL.

This new insight fuelled big conversations between us and the client. We were recommending significant shifts in media investment which would see us breaking global conventions, asking for further investment all during waves of economic uncertainty in a market which was underperforming.