B&T was front and centre for Contiki managing director Katrina Barry’s presentation at the Millennials Marketing Conference yesterday in Sydney, where she shared exactly how the 55-year-old youth travel brand has redefined itself over the last four years.

Having given up advertising on the platform a long time ago, Barry said Contiki embarked on a four-year journey of redefining the brand by not just thinking like a publisher, but being the publisher.

Research by Contiki uncovered four key insights:

• User-generated content in ads gets four times higher click-through rates.
• 62 per cent of Millennials say they’re likely to remain loyal to a brand through consistent engagement (in other words, more content equals more engagement).
• 42 per cent of Millennials say they’re more likely to buy from a brand that provides educational content (the expertise factor).
• 42 per cent of Millennials trust recommendations from people they know (the rise of the micro-influencer).

Barry said these insights prompted a three-pronged approach for Contiki’s repositioning.

Phase one was to relaunch its blog, which involved strengthening Contiki’s content team with a string of journos and writers, producing more content, and implementing a publishing schedule with monthly editorial teams.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t enough for Contiki, with Barry admitting that sales weren’t too flash. So, the company created a community of content creators in January called The Travel Project (TTP) – because, as Barry put it, “travel creates better humans”.

“We wanted to build an army of storytellers who connected with our customer base,” she said.

The results? A 30 per cent reduction in bounce rate, 45 per cent more page views, and three times more e-commerce transactions from TTP compared to other campaigns.

“They’re the kind results that you want to be showing when you front up to board meetings, and they came from something that we’re really passionate about,” Barry said. –