I led a team of creatives, marketers, photographers and videographers on a 2-year campaign to reposition and market the Bahamas Out Islands. We had a hunch there were more people out there that would really enjoy The Out Islands experience — if only they knew about it. Turns out we were very right.

OWNING THE BRAND

The logo on the left is the official brand mark for The Islands of The Bahamas. But mostly it represents mass tourism in Grand Bahama, Nassau and Paradise Island. But The Out Islands of offered something completely different. So leveraging the existing brand equity of The Bahamas, we developed a slightly different brand mark and color palette to differentiate the Out Islands.

ROLLING IT OUT

We launched a multi-channel paid and earned media campaign in major markets with direct airline connections to the Bahamas Out Islands. The campaign was highly targeted to affluent, outdoorsy travelers, like most of the current demographic that visited the Bahamas Out Islands.

trip planning Website

The Out Islands website was designed to allow visitors to build a vacation experience based on budget, nearby activities and special promotion packages from over fifty resorts and hotels, including Ritz Carlton, Four Seasons and a number of beachfront boutique hotels.

SOCIAL VIDEO

In addition to building an extensive library of photographic assets, we developed a series of video webisodes that launched on YouTube and all social media channels every 2 weeks just prior to peak season.

YouTube Brand Channel

The Bahamas Out Islands was the first tourism destination in the Caribbean to launch a branded YouTube® marketing channel. To promote the video channel, we launched a series of short video ads, featuring out takes from each island.

SOMETHING DIFFERENT

If you've ever been to The Bahamas, chances are pretty good it was a cruise to Grand Bahama, the crowded beaches of Nassau or the casinos of Paradise Island. But if you've ever been on any of the other 697 islands of The Bahamas, you know the experience could not be more different. So we set out to show it.

SEEING IS BELIEVING

To show the unspoiled natural beauty of the Out Islands, I directed a 3 week photo shoot across dozens of remote and uninhabited islands and cays in the Bahamas. And because the islands offered such natural and authentic experiences, we didn't want to use professional models. Instead we asked everyday people who had never been to Bahamas Out Islands to experience its natural beauty for the first time. 

CAMPAIGN RESULTS

In year one, our efforts to reposition The Out Islands and target the right market paid off significantly. While overall traffic increased, the clearest early indication that we were onto something was the doubling of the average time spent on the site. And within the first year, the campaign was directly responsible for more than 1,200 sales leads to 50 resorts and hotels. And the sales leads we sent to Out Island properties were 4x more likely to book than visitors that came directly to individual hotel websites.