The opportunity

STA Travel UK (@STATravel_UK) was keen to raise brand and product awareness using innovative video content. It particularly wanted to connect with young men, who can be hard to reach, to introduce them to its brand of adventure travel and encourage them to take an exciting trip.

The strategy

Dubbed the ‘the least sensible thing you could do in two weeks’, @STATravel_UK’s Rickshaw Run campaign set out to challenge travellers to take a two-week rickshaw adventure across India. The brand saw an opportunity to use Twitter’s Promoted Video to bring great video content to a new audience in the UK and drive engagement by targeting a specific consumer.

Steps to success

1. Use Promoted Video to grab attention.

@STATravel_UK optimised its video content with Promoted Video. It used clever Tweet copy to arouse curiosity and prompt users to engage to get more information. The campaign attracted users with the teaser line ‘3,500 km across India on a glorified lawnmower’.

2. Use the best content.

The quality of the creative content was key. The video was punchy, humorous and ideally suited to the platform. Also, it was crucially the right length; 64% of Twitter users say the ideal length of smartphone video is 30 to 120 seconds, according to research carried out by Twitter in the UK in early 2015.

3. Reach the ideal audience with the right targeting.

@STATravel_UK used interest targeting, @username targeting and TV targeting to reach specific audiences who had an interest in travel. It also used usernames such as @lonelyplanet to find followers of direct competitors.

The success

Interest targeting performed strongly for @STATravel_UK and helped to generate more than 207,000 impressions. Overall, it achieved an engagement rate of 2.58% and a £0.20 cost per view.