Unleashed Grad Trips
Service
Strategy, Branding & Content Marketing
Location
Sydney, Australia & The Fijian Islands
The Brand
Our brand persona build travelled all through the tropical islands of Fiji and Vanuatu, to exotic adventures around Europe, Japan and Cambodia.
Unleashed Grad Trips is Australia’s pioneer in gateway travel. They provide 17 & 18-year-old Aussie students an experience that’s extravagant with all the bells and whistles. Their chaperones aka Unleashed Crew make sure the entire trip from start to finish is safe and smooth. They tick off all the boxes for the students and their parents alike. Our project with Unleashed Grad Trips(UGT) really took us to new lands. Literally!
The Challenges
Brand Awareness, Brand Recognition, Brand Recall, Word Of Mouth, Brand Momentum, Customer Experience(CX) & Qualifying Leads.
Like most startups, UGT has eyebrow raising innovative products and experiences on offer. They are carefully tailored around what the customer wants. This customer-centric approach meant their entire team is very confident that they have exactly what their customers want and need. Unleashed has a great product that addresses all major concerns, they have a cohesive team and a streamlined customer journey. They have all their ducks lined up and yet organic growth wasn’t where the founders knew it could be.
Lack of brand awareness and limited resources make for a very tough challenge. This can be an uphill battle for many startups and is typically caused by an asset deficiency. A brand either works for or works against the business. XX’s brand experts help businesses bottle and boost your brand by communicating a consistent message across the board to generate long-term value and returns on investment(ROI).
Our Solution
Website Revamp, Customer Journey, Lead Nurturing, Brand Mascot, Content Marketing, User Generated Content, Design Thinking, Content Strategy, Brand Style Guideline
Organic growth is the result of a captivating brand personality that champions and entices the target market to be part of the brand community. Creating FOMO is the solution to the challenge faced by Unleashed. The vehicle; an entire marketing strategy focused on showcasing the amazing experience Unleashed Grad Trips has on offer for Australian students.
XX Caution; simple & effective at work.
Before diving into action, we reckon understanding the situation is paramount. More often than not, the target market provides all the answers. Knowing how to read the answers provided is one of the skills great marketers need. Our lead strategist Amit, knows the importance of balancing behavioural science with data analytics. The Unleashed Grad Trips brand already had a captivating personality, we showcased it in a strategic way that pulled at the heart strings of the young Australian target market.
The newest generations have a craving for belonging, authenticity and the wonder of travel. Living life with a purpose and protecting the planet are just a couple of the topics that they resonate with. Generation Y & Z see brands as an extension of themselves, it defines who they are and where they fit into the world, which means they do their research before choosing a brand. More than ever, newer generations make buying decisions based on recommendations from friends. You might think referrals have always been around, but today, just scrolling through your Facebook feed you are exposed to countless ads and promotional content without even realising it; and that’s just one channel. This is where recommendations from friends takes the pedestal.
Brand loyalty is also very high as there are several brands that cater for specific paradigms. Every brand has a unique brand community that surrounds it and supports it. We see a plethora of answers in these few sentences that address the challenges faced by Unleashed Grad Trips.
Unleashed’s personality is very well-rounded and has many different elements that make it magnetic. The best way to represent it all is through a brand mascot or as we call it the Brand Champion (cue epic music). A Brand Champion takes the form of an anchor for values, beliefs, experiences, memories, emotions and milestones. When one entity is connected to so many elements it becomes a powerful brand asset. We took it one step further and created a Brand Seal, an official mark that’s rich in symbolism and captures an authoritative position. It provides the ultimate brand authority to every element it’s applied to. Utilised in the right context and at the ideal stage of the customer journey, the Brand Champion and Brand Seal capture credibility and authority for their brand.
Our exciting passion project Marketing Is Life dives deeper into everything branding and marketing.
Once we had identified the brand personality, we then consolidated it into the brand guidelines so it could be understood and replicated by the entire Unleashed Grad Trip Team. Next Step; embedding their personality at every stage of the entire customer journey.
Customer Experience (CX)
We proposed a comprehensive brand strategy to appeal to their niche Grad Trip market. Utilising design thinking we created a Customer Experience that captured the wow effect for students and parents right from their first brand contact. The result; a Customer Journey that educated and nurtured customers about the brand and its pioneering purpose.
In order to execute on our solution, we developed an entire customer journey that focuses on educating the students and parents about the several micro-experiences that make for an amazing #GradTrip overall. Every stage of the customer journey highlighted how Unleashed had solved problems and answered questions frequently faced by their past customers. We hyper-focused on feedback from past customers, Unleashed Crew and the core team to get an in-depth understanding of the market, trips offered and plethora of benefits of travelling on an Unleashed Grad Trip.
The upside to implementing an experience-centric strategy is that it made for absolutely stunning content. Which boosted word-of-mouth amongst the target market and set the foundations for a brilliant inbound growth strategy.
Of course, we worked on several other aspects of this very comprehensive project but thought best to give you the birds eye view of it all, so you understand our strategic and creative thinking process. Besides, we wouldn’t want to be giving away the secret sauce that helped Unleashed Grad Trips build a thriving brand community. If you’re interested to build a thriving brand community of your own, let’s get the conversation started with our Exploration Call.
The Result
Together, Unleashed’s captivating brand personality helped position their brand & community as the best option on the market for young Australians. We notice a significant impact on year on year growth in brand awareness, adoption and revenue generated. The vital aspect of this success goes to the fact that each and every member of their team supported our efforts 100%. With powerful branding and content that showcases the brand experience in just the right way, growth is inevitable!
We teamed up with RAAW Creative to capture the awe-inspiring Fiji Grad Trip experience.
We teamed up with Extreme Focus Films to capture the sensational snow experience on UGTs Japan Grad Trip.
“We’ve always expected great things from Amit. From day one he has gone above and beyond to build our brand so our students can feel like they are part of a new Australian tradition.
Word-of-mouth is the most important sales generator for us and Amit delivered just that!”
Jot Lynas, Founder & Managing Director, Unleashed Grad Trips
Related Projects
