Destination Industry Award
2022
Nominee
Finalist
Shortlist
Winner
Find Your Freedom
Cape Town Tourism
Find Your Freedom is Africa’s first Interactive Travel Adventure. The concept took the form of an interactive game that drew on Afrofuturism as inspiration for the characters, an African Storyteller and high-paced exploration through the city.
Our three major USPs - natural beauty, culture and food – were translated into three game characters representing routes that visitors could explore in an interactive digital space. Users were able to choose between these three characters and then make further choices within the journey to find their own freedom in a choice-driven travel adventure. With the game sitting at the core of our strategy, we rolled-out the concept across multiple communication channels, launching on 28 March and ending 30 June’22.
The push to the game came from adapting the concept in a way relevant to each of our communication channels. For TikTok, we created the 2nd-ever branded effect in Africa, where you could become one of the Find Your Freedom characters. For GoPro, we hosted a carefully selected group of their international ambassadors who shared their Find Your Freedom adventures with their extensive Instagram and TikTok followings. In-destination, our mobile visitor information team took Find Your Freedom into the city by going to key visitor locations with iPads and exclusive deals of experiences featured in the game. We brought the campaign full circle with an activation booth at Cape Town International Airport that travellers could engage with before heading into the city.
Judges Comments
Here is a summary of the judge's comments for the winner of the Destination Industry Award - Awarded to Cape Town Tourism's 'Find Your Freedom'.
Why it's a winner
'Find Your Freedom' is the result of a well-designed and strategic campaign developed in collaboration with creatives from TikTok, GoPro ambassadors, and international PR agencies to leverage the impact of this unique interactive game. One of the things that stood out was the creative concept incorporated to create these African personas and the tricks implemented to create interactivity and a gamified effect.
Another aspect that jumped out was how successful Cape Town Tourism was in defining the right concept and the right partners to work with to effectively target Millennials - after understanding that they would be more likely to travel in the uncertain pandemic climate than other more risk-averse groups.
It is also worth mentioning the clear and strong impact that this unique campaign had on target markets, including hotel and flight booking KPIs. The judges highlighted the stunning ROI of 8:1 which exceeded the 5:1 target in an exceptionally challenging environment.
What it taught us
'Find Your Freedom' teaches us that destinations need to be agile to attract those strategic segments where they have an active presence. In uncertain times, this becomes even more relevant and Cape Town Tourism was able to effectively readjust its marketing strategy and develop a successful campaign, in a brilliantly creative way. Furthermore, it resulted in immediate results for the stakeholders - who were eager to welcome more visitors.
Scoring
The judging criteria looked at Execution, Impact, Creativity and Strategy. The results were excellent across all four categories, but the judges were amazed by the strategy behind this campaign and how creative and impactful it was from the stakeholders' perspective.
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