Travelling 868 miles around Scotland, 19 different locations, shooting 5 unique commercials, in 6 days… A colossal collaboration that resulted in changing millennials’ perceptions of Scotland from haggis and bagpipes to a cool and vibrant destination.
Our #ScotE4 Adventure
The Big Idea
VisitScotland were looking for a solution to tap into a millennial audience that continued to overlook Bonnie Scotland as a place to visit and explore. Not only did VisitScotland want to drive visits and a willingness to consider Scotland as a “must-go” destination. Our millennial viewers asked; “Why go to Scotland when you can go to Thailand, Ibiza or even Australia?” Alongside our partners at The Story Lab, CARAT and The Chase Films we conceived a unique partnership to put our millennial viewers in control.
Collaborating with The Story Lab and CARAT, along with C4’s creative process PL4Y we believed we had the perfect solution to the brief. Our idea was driven by Channel 4’s Tribes research which allowed us to better understand millennials, identifying that interaction, technology, social media, and personalisation were vital to maximising engagement. We would create a unique, scalable idea that delivered interactive, reality moments across multiple platforms.
By recruiting a cast of six young travellers so that viewers could follow their experiences and travels across Scotland over a week of ‘as live’ linear commercials on E4. Each day illustrating 24 hours of the travellers’ encounters in ‘real time’. We wanted to create a never before attempted, holiday journey for viewers on screen. Young viewers being put in charge of where they wanted to go next and what they wanted to see. An experiential journey around all that Scotland has to offer, from the comfort of a sofa.
The E4 Partnership was ground breaking for VisitScotland. It was the right communication, delivered in a bold, innovative and campaignable way. It delivered brilliantly on the objective of changing the way young people feel about holidaying in Scotland. The project was not without its risks, but based on the results and the content it delivered, it was certainly a risk worth taking. - Charlie Smith, Director of Marketing & Digital, VisitScotland
Making it Happen
Our Tribes research told us that millennials engage more positively where the production values are high, this led us to our partnership with Oscar nominated production company The Chase Films. However, we were still putting unpredictable viewers, who had at first seemed disengaged with what Scotland had to offer in control. It was a risky leap of faith so we had to ensure that all parties were bought into the vision.
The campaign launched with a bespoke 20” recruitment campaign running across E4 for two weeks, offering one millennial the chance to join the others by entering a casting video of themselves and telling us why they wanted to see what Scotland had to offer.
We invited viewers to choose the locations of the ads across the week using Twitter. This offered viewers the opportunity to vote for the next day’s activity through #ScotE4. The Twitter poll, was live for 30 minutes after the ad. Once votes were counted, cast and crew reactively moved to the winning location, ready to film the following day’s tour.
From a production and delivery perspective handing over control to our viewers in “real time” across a week posed quite a logistical challenge never attempted before on this scale. Filming destinations were only discovered the night before at 11pm.
The filming and delivery was a colossal challenge, but amazingly 5 commercials were shot and edited in 6 days, in 19 location, travelling 868 miles around Scotland. Activities featured in the spots varied from Wind Karting to Speed-Boating, to Quad biking to drinking tea on a Steam Train! All filmed, edited, Clearcast approved and delivered from completely different locations around some of Scotland’s most rural areas, whether we were setting up mobile edit suites on cliff edges or testing the filming terrain for River Canyoning at dawn. And we can safely say none of this would have been able to happen without the close collaboration and great relationships of all the teams and companies involved.
Young viewers that saw the ad were 82%
more likely to have taken action as a result
The likelihood of visiting Scotland in the next three years was up to 2nd place,
up from 6th
The Results
• We had 100 video entries to join the cast which is incredible given the viewers had to record themselves for 2-3 minutes and answer 3 mandatory questions – not the most straightforward recruitment process so we were thrilled with the amount of people that took the time and effort to submit their entries.
Independently commissioned research has captured the overwhelmingly positive response from millennials;
• 1st – Consideration to visit Scotland as a UK destination (up from 4th )
• 82% Young viewers were more likely to have taken action as a result of seeing the ads (vs. norm 60%)
• 2nd - Likelihood to visit Scotland in next 3 years (up from 6th)
• 1st - Advertising recall of Scotland amongst tourist locations (up from 4th)
• 75% of recallers deeming the ads informative, exciting, entertaining and inspiring
The results speak for themselves. We saw huge interaction with millennials throughout the campaign, across casting, the competition and social voting. Consideration to visit shot up the ranks and young people were clearly now sitting up and listening to what Scotland had to offer. The perception of the campaign was undeniably positive and along with the audience interaction and results themselves, this multi-platform campaign was a real success story for collaboration.
