Wanderlust: Innovation Brand Project
Participating in the #Marketing_Mobile DigitalLab by #ADandPRLab of Panteion University, we were asked to collaborate in teams and create from scratch a new digital brand that we would present to our tutors and to two freelancers, specialized in examining new start-ups and brands.
During the first team’s meet up, we started looking online for new start-ups and companies in order to get inspired, and while seeking, we stumbled across an article of Stefanie Berk, the managing director at Thomas Cook in Germany, with the title: “Personalized travel packages are the future of vacation”. That article really did trigger our interest and we decided to conduct a research with online questionnaires to examine whether this view would apply in Greece. We decided that we wanted to create something for people near our age; this is why we targeted people from 18 to 35 years old.
From our research, we found out that the majority of the people who answered, preferred to plan their trips on their own, as they wish to create something that would match their preferences and needs, whereas the lack of tailor-made packages is what they detest the most from already-existing online travel agencies. Furthermore, the majority of the answers revealed that status and interests were the two main factors based on which someone chooses a destination for their vacation. Our team, based on the research, decided to prototype by creating the first online site where users could design their own travel packages, based on their personal status and interests, and be able to choose the means of transport and the budget based on how they would desire to customize their trip. Our site would be free of charge for users, in order to attract more potential customers, whereas our income would come from the advertisements included in the site and from collaborations and discounts, that our brand would make with transportation, accommodation & all-inclusive ticket companies. Customizing with the new era’s needs we resolved that our site would be available on laptops, tablets and smartphones, and that we would provide it to our users also with an app.
On our target group, we have the Young Wanderers (as we like to call them), men and women aged from 18 to 35 years old, who love traveling, are alternative, want the maximum result with the minimum possible effort, and are social media experts and lovers.
We believed in our idea, as we would be the first site with tailor-made packages with personalized creative filters and youthful design, with a 24/7 live chat in order to meet the users’ needs and answer potential questions. Moreover, taking into consideration the fact that we are close to the age of our target group, we can understand what they need and the way they think, and adopt it to our project. Traveling is a field that always grows; however, the market of tailor-made packages is underserved, a fact that gives as a huge step ahead of the other traveling agencies, combined with the usage of social media and the adjustment of the price of packages based on customers’ needs.
Nevertheless, we recognize that our lack of technological knowledge, budget and connections may be a challenge for us as well as the notability of our competitors and the downturn in Greek financial statement.
Now, when it comes to positioning our idea into the market, we decided to create a positioning map, while having other competitor brands positioned there as well — this way, we would find out if our idea actually covered the gap we discovered and possibly, it would shed a light on our differences from the rest of the competitors. We came to the conclusion that our idea would be peaking between a wide variety of personalized filters and tailor-made packages. We also noticed that none of our competitors were even close to our position, they were in-between a small variety of personalized filters and ordinary group packages.
To continue, we needed to have a more complete understanding of how our brand idea was going to look like. Since our team was made of young, passionate and modern people, we thought it would be best for our brand to represent those values as well. Our brand values would consist of innovation, modernity, user-friendliness, commitment, adventure, passion, positivity and of course, open-mindedness. If it were for our brand to have a personality, surely it would be someone fresh, fun, outgoing, social, trendy and might be an influencer.
So this is where Wanderlust was born.
Wanderlust opened the world of Brand Innovation for us — but at this point, we were ready to deep-dive and understand exactly where this journey would take us. This is why, we decided to create an Instagram page for Wanderlust, aimed to not only promote our services, but engage with our users as well. Our Instagram consists of numerous travel posts and pictures of places Wanderlust has custom packages for. The location of the place is always mentioned and our pictures go along with appropriate captions underneath, prompting the user to explore our different “moods”. Also, we created a hashtag called #WeWereHereToo, which encourages the user to join us and use the hashtag in one of their pictures using Wanderlust’s custom packages, giving them the chance to have their photo featured in our page. We aim to create a community full of young wanderers, who have explored every part of the world.
But of course, it couldn’t just end there. We also feature various funny posts, memes, slightly altered according to Wanderlust’s data in an attempt to create a pleasant experience for the user, as long as they are browsing through our page.
Last but not least, we came up with a TV Ad, in order to promote Wanderlust through Television as well:
Tom plans to travel to Tokyo. He decides to look up for plane tickets and accommodation. However, this isn’t an easy task — days and long nights pass until he finally finds what he wants.
Tom and his dog are ready to embark on their journey — Tom fills his car with luggage to a point where it’s ready to explode. As he’s driving to the airport, Tom starts seeing strange things on the side of the highway: a couple having a romantic dinner in the middle of nowhere with a bright red neon sign above them writing “Crazy in Love”. Tom blinks rapidly, not believing his own eyes.
After a few miles, he sees a group of young people dancing in the middle of the desert with a flying disco ball over their heads and a neon sign saying “Sleep All Day — Party All Night”.
Tom shakes his head, believing he’s losing it. Due to him staring at the group of people, he keeps his eyes off the road. Suddenly, a sumo wrestler falls abruptly on the windscreen of his car, screaming and landing on a sumo pose. Tom immediately hits the breaks, shocked and stops the car instantly. The sumo wrestler narrows his eyes and hands Tom a smartphone with Wanderlust’s logo and app activated.
Our slogan appears on screen, saying “Wanderlust; a route to wander”. On a post-credit scene, we see Tom and the dog stare awkwardly at the sumo wrestler who is now on the back seat, waiting for the car to start.
All in all, this brand innovation project was definitely a process to remember as it was one of the biggest and most professionals projects we have taken up and it surely is a worth-mentioning experience.
Our website:
https://wanderlust481518480.wordpress.com
Our Instagram page:
https://www.instagram.com/wanderluststartup/
Betty Tsakarestou, Markos Aris, Lina Bakalexi
Konstantina Angelidou, Grasiela Varkari, Ina Makrydaki, Katerina Somi, Myrto Galanopoulou, Margie Kam
