Teletext Holidays unveils new platforms and supporting campaign

Teletext Holidays is looking to take on the likes of Thomas Cook by launching a £5m awareness campaign to promote its new distribution platforms in early January.

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The DMGT-owned company has been developing channels on which to sell holidays since the beginning of this year ahead of the switch off of its analogue television signal at the end of this year.

The latest channels to be unveiled include an overhauled website designed to be more user friendly. Features include remembering what people have searched for before and the ability for users to save their results.

Teletext Holidays will also have a presence on internet-connected television, through Yahoo’s TV internet platform and through the interfaces of branded IPTV set makers, such as Samsung.

These channels stand alongside the existing Freeview 101 channel and mobile apps. The company will add an iPad app to its media mix next year.

The advertising and communications campaign, devised by MCBD, begins on 9 January and will be led by a £2.5m television campaign.

The ad will feature old 70s home movie holiday clips alongside user generated content of modern holidays uploaded via channels such as Facebook. The campaign strapline is “The best holidays of your life” and the ad will be accompanied by an as-yet unnamed “very emotive iconic track”.

Accompanying press activity includes an ad “takeover” of Metro newspaper, also owned by DMGT.

Marketing director Mark Bloxham explains that the campaign theme is driven by the insight that the emotional connection with holidays comes in remembering past trips, rather than in the booking of a new vacation.

Bloxham says that while Teletext Holidays is “synonymous” with the late bookings market, it is going out with an early January campaign “because we want to compete with the big guys. It is to put us in a brand awareness position.”

He adds that the company has been migrating its analogue customers to digital channels over the past few months and they are most comfortable with a “television-like” experience.

He does not expect consumer to take up internet-enabled TV in great numbers until the 2012 Olympics approach but that the launch of Google TV and the Youview initiative will kick-start sales.

Teletext Holidays moved the brand into physical retail for the first time last year with the opening of its first Teletext Holidays shop in a Tesco supermarket.