15/05/2008

Gratistours ~ A Second Life Holiday

satiworks was employed by Gratistours.com in November 2006 with the task of optimising their online brand awareness and preparing an offline PR & media liaison strategy.

Website Redesign & Launch

The first tier of the campaign was the successful soft re-launch of this German travel portal, which was designed by satiworks to coincide with the world’s largest travel fair the ITB (Berlin Travel Fair) 7th March 2007 and maximise the offline B2B awareness of the company .

The new site is not only cleaner, faster, more accessible and SEO friendly. It now utilises Traveltainment’s booking engine which means speedier online bookings for visitors and has increased labour efficiency for the staff through the creation of a tailored CMS, which was programmed by Meetia.

Convergent Second Life Campaign

The second stage interative Web.2 aspects of the site will be launched to coincide with bringing to the UK market this leading German travel site.

A Second Life Holiday

To fully capitalise on the success of Second Life in Germany since its launch in November 2006 which has already resulted in over 10% of its population being a 'Gratistours' holiday get away island will be launched at the beginning of April to help foster relationships and provide the space to chat about holidays that are intended or that members of the community have just come back from.

Viral Video

Leading up to the launch is the release of a teaser viral machinima video, shown on both the site and You Tube showing a Gratistours Second Life holiday produced by La-interactiva with music by Paolo Alto.

Convergent Offline & Online Presence

During the exhibition Gratistours will have both their physical stand and Second Life virtual stand opened by a Miss Germany (Miss Germany Beck) on March 8th who will be in Second Life to chat with virtual members and physically on the stand for three hours daily until the fair closes.

The Gratistours island in Second Life opened on 13th April 2007 the first step in helping to build consumer brand awareness through a soft educational travel PR campaign. This has already resulted in double-page traditional features in two of Germany's leading travel magazines.

PR & Media Liaison

satiworks prepared a detailed one-year PR & media liaison strategy, which ensured maximum exposure of the launch of the re-vamped website and its unique features in trade as well as consumer press. satiworks furthermore assisted in hiring a local PR agency to keep the company in relevant press.

An environmental initiative, KlasseKlima, was prepared and launched by satiworks, including a number of schemes to encourage customers as well as business partners to become more environmentally aware.