March 27, 2015

Portmeirion

Portmeirion worked with Prodo to develop an interactive quiz that would drive links, social shares and traffic back to the Portmeirion website. Prodo discuss the work

Brief

Portmeirion is an attraction in North Wales that was designed with the atmosphere and architecture of the Mediterranean in mind. In that sense, Portmeirion is out of place in Wales in terms of its design and uniqueness. The challenge was to create an asset to build upon Portmeirion’s reputation as a unique and unusual destination to visit. The village’s picturesque landscape lent itself to the notion of a visual asset.

The overarching objectives of the content asset were to drive links, social shares and traffic back to the website, which would all increase brand awareness and bring new visitors to Portmeirion’s site.

Strategy

No one would expect the quirky village of Portmeirion to rest at the foot of Snowdonia, and it was this unusual placement that raised a question—which places in the world look like other places?

A quiz — titled ‘Where In The World Are You?’ — was developed to feed upon people’s love of testing their general knowledge, in a format that continues to grow in popularity both in terms of participation and social media sharing.

Execution

By asking the user a simple question, ‘Where are you?’, then presenting them with an image of a destination along with two possible answers, the user uses their own travel experiences and general knowledge to try and decipher where they are.

The images were a combination of both popular and lesser known destinations that seem out of place in their surroundings (like the Italian-themed Portmeirion in Wales), or that look similar to other tourist destinations.

We then worked on creating a simple responsive design for the quiz and ensured that it was easily shareable on social media with share buttons across the top of the quiz.

Result

The concept of discovering new places resonated with travel buffs everywhere. Within the first month of publication, the quiz increased month-on-month traffic for the Portmeirion website by 38 per cent. The quiz landing page has received almost 13,000 visits to date.

The quiz also yielded 2,500 Facebook shares and 81 shares on Twitter, and was linked to on blogs such as travelmag.co.uk, besttravelplaces.co.uk, travelwithbender.com and pommietravels.com, helping to increase rankings across the board.

The quiz has been played 4,727 times by 4,126 users. 89 per cent of these visitors are new to the site, and the bounce rate remains low throughout at 15 per cent.

The accolade that the team are most proud of, however, is its organic pick-up by digital agency Distilled, in an article titled Fingers On Buzzers | Quizzes From Around The Web. The article describes the asset as a way to “pit your wits while travelling the globe”.

We maximised engagement at a low spend on paid media, with the quiz generating a great click-through rate on Facebook.