Cosmos Holidays targets younger market

Cosmos Holidays is launching a post-Christmas campaign to help rebuild brand awareness and boost its appeal to more youthful customers.

cosmos

The brand, owned by The Monarch Group, is keen to tap into a younger demographic after tracking showed its core customer base is about 10 years older than rivals. The campaign is designed to boost spontaneous brand awareness and act as a call to action.

The campaign concept, developed with Iris, takes the strap line “100 % Holidays” and will use “observational humour” to engage customers and deliver key messages about simplicity of booking, value for money and security.

Cosmos says that it is making its biggest marketing investment for five years in the multichannel campaign, which begins on Boxing Day and embraces outdoor, radio, press and online activity, supported by a strong online search budget.

Commercial and marketing director Phil Boggon says: “Market research over the last three years shows not only is our spontaneous awareness lower than it should be but also the level of awareness is much stronger with an older demographic.”

He adds that this is partly to do with Cosmos being turned into a B2B brand for a three year period until 2010 but now Monarch Group wants to tap into nearly five decades of brand equity as a consumer brand.

Cosmos Holidays hopes to tap into the growing trend for all inclusive package holidays that has helped rival Thomson Holidays, owned by TUI UK, deliver robust financial results.

Boggon says: “When we speak to customers we find those most open to booking package holidays are the ones who are a little tired of the novelty of self-packaging. They’ve had a few years of doing that and are now finding there is too much choice out there. These holidays are the one or two weeks in the year when they don’t want to have to think about anything.”

The other big player in package holidays, Thomas Cook, has just restructured its senior management team and is preparing a £5m plus campaign for the new year to help turn around a declining business.

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