Post-pandemic, our client ABTA wanted to better understand what a travelling public, freshly battered and newly emerging from a locked-down world, felt about ABTA’s core brand positioning of Travel with confidence.

Our brief was to investigate, dig deep and research a variety of audiences, from the travelling public, ABTA members & stakeholders and to report back with findings, conclusions and recommendations.

RESEARCH

The first step was to review the vast amount of quantitative research available.

• Document & Data Review
• Market Trends Analysis
• Competitor Analysis

We concluded that what this brief required was a qualitative understanding derived via focus groups from a range of audiences. ABTA stakeholders, ABTA customer support team, and consumer groups.

Over the course of several months, we recruited participants, structured our questions, facilitated and recorded our work. This was then analyzed thoroughly with observations made and conclusions drawn. Culminating with recommendations of how to go forward.

STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT

Each stage of research and our conclusions were summarised and presented back to ABTA for their feedback/agreement to take the next step.

Our final conclusion was that Travel with confidence was still ABTA’s core brand, but that its meaning had changed significantly. So while the words remained it was very important that the re-positioning and communication around it were clarified for members as well as the traveling public.

CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT

We then developed creative copy options, which set up a range of ways to express:

• Who ABTA is
• ABTA’s offer
• How ABTA supports travelers (and thus their membership’s audiences)
• How ABTA offers protection and what that is
• ABTA’s expertise.

This stimulus was presented to a further selection of focus groups for qualitative research. The responses were filmed, analysed, and reported back on – again with recommendations and copy refinements.

ROLL OUT

Having begun the project in 2021 and with a small hiatus for lockdown, No 3, the new ABTA brand guidelines and roll-out implementation progressed in 2023, across all forms of communication from website to PR and across all comms materials including the language used internally.

July 2021 – January 2023

ABTA

Research, strategic analysis and reporting, creative positioning development.