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.