Leading Yahoo's Record-Breaking Visit Britain Campaign (2012-2016)

How creative leadership turned Yahoo's biggest pitch win into a five-year partnership, exceeding ambitious tourism goals against major competitors.

Project: Winning and delivering Visit Britain project internationally.

• My Role: Creative Lead. Hands on work: concept, strategy, sketching, pitching, internal stakeholder collaboration, partnership management, planning, advertising creative direction, agency management, budgeting, data analysis.

• Timeline: 2011 - 2015

The Challenge: A Big Pitch and Ambitious Goals

In 2012, Yahoo faced a pivotal moment: the opportunity to win the £5 million Visit Britain digital campaign, the largest single-brand pitch in its history. Success meant not only securing the contract but also delivering a tangible impact – attracting an additional 2.2 million visitors to the UK. Furthermore, the challenge extended beyond the initial year; we needed to prove Yahoo's value proposition against giants like Google and Facebook to retain the partnership long-term.

As the creative lead, the pressure was on to devise a strategy that was not only innovative but deeply effective.

Our Approach: Authentic Voices, Integrated Strategy

Understanding the need for genuine connection, we rejected generic travel advertising at the time. Through an ideation process focused on authenticity and reach, I developed the following core concept:

A content strategy aimed to build trust and engagement by speaking to potential visitors through the voices of relatable, native-speaking influencers deeply embedded within British culture.

Bringing the Vision to Life: Implementation & Evolution

My role involved providing continuous strategic oversight and creative direction for the entire five-year duration. We didn't just launch; we iterated and expanded:

1. Identify & Recruit: We sourced influential UK-based bloggers and editors who were originally from our key target markets (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, China, Japan, Australia, USA).

2. Develop Bespoke Content Hubs: We launched dedicated digital magazines for Visit Britain, housed within Yahoo's high-traffic verticals (Travel, Sport, Fashion, News). These featured content created by our recruited influencers, offering authentic perspectives relevant to their home markets.

3. Unified Ad Creative: I oversaw the strategy and creative direction for all Visit Britain digital advertising across all markets in the crucial launch year, ensuring message consistency and leveraging our unique content

An innovative multi-year partnership:

• Year 1 (2012): Successfully launched the digital magazines and the cross-market ad campaigns. We also initiated a Flickr group, creating a powerful user-generated content stream that provided Visit Britain with 72,000 authentic images for their use.

• Year 3 (2014): Responding to evolving platform trends, we created an award-winning Tumblr site, rapidly growing its audience to 70,000 followers within six months, demonstrating agile adaptation.

• Year 4 (2015): We executed Yahoo EMEA's largest-ever branded video campaign, driving millions of global views and showcasing the scalability of our creative platform.

Results: Exceeding Targets and Securing Long-Term Success

The results consistently validated the strategy and creative execution:

• Consistent Ad Performance: Achieved and maintained an exceptional average click-through rate (CTR) of approximately 1% across all digital advertising, across all markets, for all five years. This significantly outperformed industry benchmarks and drove vast, qualified traffic to Visit Britain's websites.

• Content Goals Surpassed: Over-delivered on all editorial and content targets in the crucial first year (2012) and continued strong performance throughout.

• Sustained Partnership: Most critically, the strength of the initial idea and its successful execution led to Yahoo winning the Visit Britain pitch against Google and Facebook for the following four years, securing a five-year partnership.