Sudipto Adhicary and Isha Dara
Marketing Initiative

'Experience the New' urges Citi with its social led campaign #WhatsNewThisVacation

Citi shows the way to offbeat traveling with its Card offers and benefits.

Summer time means vacations! Stories of the new places one visits; creating new memories to cherish. And each time we want these stories and memories to be unique. Different from the stories and experiences we had on our last trips and even for our friends on their trips. There is always the desire to experience something new. Taking a cue from this insight, Citi, through its new social and digital-led campaign, #WhatsNewThisVacation, encouraged travelers to 'Experience the New' and explore off-beat destinations or experience popular destinations in a whole new way.

Kick starting the campaign with a refreshingly different move, Citi collaborated with top travel bloggers Bruised Passports' duo Savi and Vidit. Inspired by the brand's theme to 'Experience the New', the duo traveled to destinations that were offbeat and had something new and refreshing to offer like Slovenia and Andorra, while also exploring the unique side of more well known destinations like Paris and Seychelles. The traveler couple didn't leave their audience behind in this exciting journey; updating them through the use of Facebook Live, Webisodes, and Instagram, sharing travel tips and how they made the best use of their Citi cards.

'Experience the New' urges Citi with its social led campaign #WhatsNewThisVacation

Citi has always been synonymous with travel offers and this time too it provided some exciting deals on flights and stay, through partnerships with top travel brands like MakeMyTrip, Airbnb, and British Airways and many more; enabling the cards users to 'Experience the New'!

Eager to know the unique travel experiences and stories of its followers, Citi also launched a contest around #WhatsNewThisVacation – on Facebook asking the travel community to share their unique and offbeat travel stories, using the hashtag #WhatsNewThisVacation. Top travel bloggers such as Siddhartha Joshi, Lakshmi Sharath, Akanksha Redhu, and many others also joined in the fun sharing their offbeat travel stories on blogs and social media handles, and helped drive home the campaign idea of 'Experience the New'. The most interesting stories were selected and rewarded with travel coupons. The contest generated a lot of buzz and engagement with over 650 stories being submitted by the followers making #WhatsNewThisVacation among the top 5 engaging Facebook campaigns in May from BFSI sector in Asia Pacific!

Citi also smartly identified online and offline travel hot-spots for promoting the campaign idea and offers. They partnered with popular travel websites such as TripAdvisor and HolidayIQ creating interventions during the travel inspiration phase of the consumer journey.

Travel being synonymous with pretty pictures, Citi also used in-image advertising to reach those who consume travel content on the web. It also leveraged owned media such as Citi Facebook Page, EDM, Branch and ATM network, and Citibank Website along with Outdoor media at key locations such as premium malls to maximize the campaign reach. Citi offers were also exposed to travelers using WiFi targeting at Mumbai airports and through Geo-fencing at big corporate parks across Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Chennai.

The perfect combination of relevant offers, deep insight led communication, and effective promotion made this campaign stand out, and led to the highest ever spends for Citi Cards in May'17, and 31% YOY growth in card spends for May-June'17.

Brilliantly conceptualized and executed, the campaign created massive buzz among Citi card users, delivering a reach of 16 million+ on Facebook, the highest ever for a Citi India Campaign and resulting in highest PTAT (17.1%) among the competition, leaving no doubt that Citi always manages to bring something new for its users!

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