Title	#NOTFORME
Brand	THOMSON CRUISES
Product/Service	THOMSON CRUISES IN THE CARIBBEAN AND EUROPE
Entrant	EXPOSURE London, UNITED KINGDOM
Idea Creation	EXPOSURE London, UNITED KINGDOM
PR	EXPOSURE London, UNITED KINGDOM
Production	EXPOSURE London, UNITED KINGDOM

Name	Company	Position
Pete Jackson	Exposure Digital	Strategy Director
Robin Ek	Exposure Digital	Chief Creative Officer
Holly Eddleston	Exposure Digital	Influence and Marketing Director
Harriet Lawson	Exposure Digital	Influencer and Marketing Executive
Chris Lane	Exposure Digital	Insights Director
Tracey Yuen	Exposure Digital	Account Director
Conor Lehane	Exposure Digital	Art Director
Neil Disco Denning	Exposure Digital	Business Director
Jonathan Fraser	Exposure Digital	Chief Strategy Officer
Simon Brown	Exposure Digital	Head of Design
Gabriella Kaszonyi	Exposure Digital	Digital Designer
Bhavisha Patel	Exposure Digital	Senior Digital Producer
Laura Duncan	Exposure Digital	Production Executive
Aaron Child	Exposure Digital	Social Director
Peter Eichhorn	Exposure Digital	Head of Technology
Elliott Bourne	Exposure Digital	Developer
Ben van Kemenade	Exposure Digital	Junior Creative

The Campaign

People switch off to cruise adverts so how can we MAKE people listen? Simple, we don’t say a word. We created #NotForMe, an integrated campaign to get rejecters to convince themselves into a cruise. Knowing that they wouldn't listen to a cruise brand blowing their own (tired) trumpet, we enlisted 20 influencers and sent them on our cruises. They shared photos of their life-changing holiday: glorious food, astounding sea views, incredible sunsets - all with the hashtag #NotForMe. They kept that they were on a Thomson cruise a secret, causing their fans to question ‘What do you mean #NotForMe? Looks like a dream holiday!’ Through the influencers we engaged 4.6m people in the lead up to the big reveal, before finally, they unveiled who their dream holiday was with. We used the influencers’ Instagram shots to promote this ground breaking message online, in OOH, in-store and on Thomson in-flight entertainment.

Creative Execution

Influencers: During the course of their holiday, they shared over 200 photos of their experience, over a two week period in February - with the hashtag #NotForMe Website: Over these 2 weeks, every post directed people to a mysterious website - NotForMe.co.uk where all the content was housed. People could see that in fact 19 other influencers were involved. After the reveal this site became part of the Thomson main site. Reveal: Following the influencer reveal, we released a video explaining the campaign along with coverage in Nationals such as The Sun, The Express and The Mail, as well as Regional and Radio media. Integration: We used our influencer's most popular and perception-changing content as the basis for OOH, digital OOH, in-store and Thomson Airways media placements. This ran for a month from late March to late April - a key time for autumn Caribbean bookings.

We collaborated with 20 bloggers, vloggers and Instagram influencers with a combined following of more than 4.6 million followers. During the campaign they shared over 200 posts. By the end of the campaign these had received over 650,000 Likes (quadruple all of Thomson’s previous Instagram content combined), plus 6,000+ comments - all with a reach of 12.4 million. The reveal film received over 300,000 views and was supported by further vlogs posted by our influencers, which received a further 180,000+ views. We earned 106 pieces of media coverage (64 online, 27 in print and 15 on radio) including the Daily Express, the Mail Online, The Metro and The Sun - this achieved over 41 million impressions. Most importantly of all, we saw genuine consideration among target consumers, with Thomson cruise bookings increasing by an impressive 30%.

This campaign ticks all the traditional boxes for an ‘integrated’ piece – it has a big, bold idea at the centre of it, and it’s executed in a very wide number of channels, including social media, website, in-store, OOH (and digital OOH), PR and even in our Thomson aeroplanes. However we feel this campaign also marks a step-change in the industry for integration using social media. Digital and integrated agencies such as ourselves are all too used to “bolting on� social and digital media to big TV ads, so it’s especially refreshing for us to execute a campaign born in social media, which then fuels the ATL and other channels. What’s more, this approach wasn’t just adopted for the sake of disrupting the industry, but in response to a specific business and perception problem which specifically benefited from this strategy.

Our problem: The average age of a cruise passenger is over 50. If cruising is to survive, we must convince younger generations to see cruising as a desirable holiday option. This triggers an even bigger problem… Our social listening analysis revealed that ‘Not For Me’ was the number one response to cruising, for our audience. The stigma is so ingrained; cemented by misconceptions of poor food, elderly clientele and karaoke entertainment - the hurdles for Thomson have been impossible to overcome. For decades, competitors have spent millions on impressive campaigns attempting to change these perceptions, but rejecters do not listen; a cruise is not, nor will it ever be, for them. They see a glitzy ad about cruising and just switch off. Thomson needed a brave approach - one with the power to not only change the cruising industry, but completely reimagine what a cruise holiday consists of.