< backButlins Events

Repositioning a household name

One of Britain’s best-known names, Butlins invited Impact to pitch for a new ad campaign for its corporate events business, Conference & Events at Butlins. In developing our presentation, we quickly realised that the brand had enormous potential, which its existing strategy and collateral weren’t fully exploiting.

So as well as innovative creative work, our pitch included a detailed strategic review of the brand, with recommendations. On the strength of this, Butlins awarded us both the ad campaign, and a much larger development project, with a remit to consider – and, if necessary, change – every aspect of the brand.

Based on our own extensive research, which included site visits to all three Resorts, we undertook a complete strategic repositioning of the brand. Rather than try to ‘hide’ the Butlins name – an all-but impossible task, given its familiarity - we recommended bringing it right to the fore, and renamed the business as Butlins Events. We also felt ‘Conferences and Events’ was too restrictive: our new positioning for Butlins is as the choice for large events centred on people. Having identified the target markets, we have now developed appropriate messages and creative directions.

For the initial ‘soft’ launch of the new branding, we produced an interim brochure, using existing photography, heavily re-cropped to create a fresher, more ‘open’ feel. We followed this up with a ‘full’ launch, starting with DM campaigns aimed at schools and large corporate clients.