Welcome to Mudder Nation

• 3.5 million community

• 10,000+ participants with Tough Mudder tattoos

• 150+ events globally

When you cross the finish line at your first Tough Mudder event, you qualify to join the Tough Mudder Legionnaire Program. Continue to kick ass by completing more Tough Mudder classic and Race Series events, throughout your Mudder career and gain your next coloured headband.

A core part of my role as Vice President, Marketing for International markets was driving loyalty, retention, and repeat sales. With an NPS of more than 80 across International events, Tough Mudder saw repeat rates of more than 70%, which is unprecedented within the live events space.

We developed a number of initiatives designed to drive loyalty and retention including;

Post Event Survey: Following each event, we created a series of triggered communications collecting post-event feedback (through NPS), and offering a one-time discount code valid for a future events. Through continued optimisation of these communications, we were able to significantly increase conversion and secure early repeat sales (up to 40% of future sales within 1 week).

Launch of Legionnaire Ambassadors program: As a reward for our most loyal legionnaire’s, Tough Mudder Ambassadors received free event entry, discount codes to pass onto friends and family, ambassador merchandise and access to brand updates and events. In return, ambassadors took on volunteer roles including helping at events, leading community events and sales support.

Launch of Holy Grail: Following the expansion of the Tough Mudder competitive series, the Holy Grail loyalty program rewards those who complete each of the competitive products: Tougher Mudder, Toughest Mudder and World’s Toughest Mudder. Awarded at World’s Toughest Mudder in Vegas, those who complete the series receive a physical golden grail trophy.

Each year Lonely Planet’s team of travel experts, authors, and travel community select the hottest up-and-coming top 10 countries, top 10 cities and top 10 regions, setting the travel agenda for the coming year. These recommendations are published in a yearly title called – Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel.

In previous years, the annual list was announced through the release of the “Best in Travel” reference book, with marketing support from PR and traditional marketing channels. We saw an opportunity to harness the high levels of interest for this campaign to drive traffic to lonelyplanet.com and create one of the biggest and most ambitious online campaigns to date.

The online launch included;

• The launch of a new interactive online hub for Best in Travel content featuring an inspirational image gallery and responsive design.

• The launch of a Best in Travel digital eBook for sale through the Book Store in Apple Books (previously iBooks).

• A data acquisition competition mechanic titled “What’s your travel destiny?” was integrated into the campaign to increase engagement and social reach of the campaign (in partnership with Booking.com).

• Launch of additional socially engaging and shareable Top 10 lists designed to drive social reach amongst our community including “Top 10 destinations for cat lovers”.

• Travel playlist created within Spotify’s Soundrop app celebrating music from our top country destinations.

• Creation of Best in Travel video content showcasing each of the top winning destinations in a new engaging and shareable format.

Campaign results;

• Best in Travel content drove 1.86 million page views.

• The campaign received 4,388 pieces of PR coverage with a total media value of over #8 million.

• Best in Travel content reached a social media audience of more than 2.4 million users.

• The eBook was downloaded 1.2 million times and was included in Apple’s coveted “12 Days of Christmas” promotion.

• The Best in Travel book delivered a 23% increase in sales YOY.

• The playlist was featured by Soundrop who spotlighted it in a featured Room.

LINKS:

Lonely Planet Best in Travel website

Lonely Planet Best in Travel launch video

Contiki Holidays are the market leaders in youth holiday travel for 18-35s. Operating since 1962, Contiki has operated tours across the globe offering young travellers a once in a lifetime experience in Europe, USA, Asia, and Australia.

Over time the Contiki product has changed significantly based on changing demands from its young customers. The brand has transformed from what was once described as a “budget party bus” to a more sophisticated product offering immersive local experiences, experienced guides and local food, while still offering the opportunity to travel with other like-minded young travellers.

Contiki faced a challenge, how did we communicate these changes to the product and ensure we remained relevant to our millennial audience?

Contiki’s #NOREGRETS brand messaging was developed, appealing to millennial trends prioritising experiences over products. The messaging was created as a travel philosophy communicating the importance of living every day like it’s your last, with passion, vigor and full-on enthusiasm. Communicating the opportunity to explore new worlds, meet new people, and say goodbye to your comfort zone.

The launch of #NoRegrets brand positioning included a global brand campaign, development of digital campaign assets (video and creative), website microsite, PPC (display advertising, social media advertising, YouTube pre-roll advertising), social media competition, and influencer video strategy.

Links:

#NoRegrets Brand Campaign Launch Video

Tough Mudder is famous for its epic 12-mile (18km) endurance courses packed with legendary obstacles, mud and teamwork. At the time, more than 70% of Tough Mudder event participants were male, and we knew we needed to reach a female audience in a new way, and excite and inspire them to take on a Tough Mudder event.

Tough Mudder partnered with one of the UK’s top morning shows, Good Morning Britain (GMB), and launched an exciting campaign called “Tough Mum’s”. Announced live on-air, the well-known presenters and mums (Susanna Reid, Kate Garraway and Charlotte Hawkins) invited inspirational mums to share their stories and apply to join them in taking on the 5-mile “Tough Mums” course.

The series helped deliver the highest annual media coverage in Tough Mudder’s history, and “Tough Mums” was featured on GMB nearly every day during the month of September. Throughout its promotion, the on-air segments garnered more than 30 pieces of coverage resulting in 12 million impressions.

On September 24, GMB aired a full takeover of the morning show, highlighting the “Tough Mums” event to their audience of 3.77 million viewers across the UK. During the period when the campaign was aired, the website saw its highest trafficked day ever (+49% previous record).

Due to its popularity and success, “Tough Mums” became an annual event, and Tough Mudder UK saw female participation increase dramatically from 30% to 45% of participants within 2 years.

Lonely Planet: Reinventing the Guidebook

If you’ve travelled the world, there’s a good chance you’ve used a Lonely Planet guidebook on your adventure. Founded in 1973, the company quickly became the leading travel publisher producing guidebooks to travel destinations across the globe.

Upon joining Lonely Planet as Director of Online Marketing, I became part of an exciting new commercial team tasked with reinventing the Lonely Planet offering online, making it discoverable and bookable. Taking decades of Lonely Planet content from guidebooks and establishing the best architecture and tools to help travellers take Lonely Planet with them digitally required a complete digital transformation.

Throughout my time with Lonely Planet, I worked with UX designers, editorial team and internal development team to scope, test, launch, optimise and drive traffic and growth for the following digital products;

• Lonely Planet Destinations: Digital guidebook content helping visitors get to the heart of every destination including; things to do and see (POIs), transport, accommodation, and travel advice.

• Lonely Planet Bookable Products: Lonely Planet recommended hotels, car rentals, adventure tours, and sightseeing tours (affiliate model).

• Lonely Planet Guides App: Available on iOs and Android, Guides provides the ability to use location data to view recommended things to do, and places to eat and sleep with downloadable offline content.

• Lonely Planet Articles: Tips and advice from Lonely Planet experts, contributors, and community.

• Lonely Planet Shop: The Lonely Planet shop is your one-stop destination for Lonely Planet guidebooks, ebooks, pictorial and reference books, and kids books.

Remit also included driving transactional revenue, advertising inventory and website engagement through digital marketing, PPC, CRM, A/B testing, analysis and reporting across Lonely Planet e-commerce and commercial channels - online shop, travel bookings and digital advertising.

www.lonelyplanet.com

https://www.lonelyplanet.com/guides

The wait is over. Introducing Baby Mudder: Tough Mudder for Babies.

👉 Watch: Baby Mudder Official Launch Video

Why should adults get to have all the fun? This April 1st, Tough Mudder announces our newest event format coming to a city near you, Baby Mudder.

The Baby Mudder course features mini-obstacles specially crafted for chewing, throwing, and even hiding for later. Obstacles like the outrageously wet and muddy "Dirty Diaper," "Don't Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater," "Baby Got Back," and "Romper Room Surprise."

In the spirit of Tough Mudder's "Tougher Together" campaign, Baby Mudder will inspire the entire family to experience the company's core values of teamwork, camaraderie and having fun – with a childish twist. While no beer will be served at the finish lines; an assortment of bottles and chew toys will be awaiting the newest generation of legionnaires.

Oh, and #Aprilfools.

Contiki Holidays is the worldwide leader in travel for 18-to-35 year-olds. With a millennial audience, Contiki’s website visitors are digital natives with high expectations for a streamlined and intuitive user experience.

As Head of Digital Marketing at Contiki, my role involved developing user-testing and customer research projects to understand the customer holiday research and buying process. By understanding how users browse and search for their ideal holiday and building personas around travel interests, we were able to define UX solutions driven by simplicity, engaging content and personalisation.

Working closely with UX designers, product managers and the content team my role involved leading a number of website redesign and optimisation projects with a holistic approach to driving growth and optimising conversions, ultimately increasing booking conversions. Projects included;

Homepage redesign: As the front door to the website, the goal of the homepage redesign was to create an engaging and interactive showcase of what Contiki is all about and how easy is to travel with us incorporating new #NoRegrets messaging and product USPs.

Product page funnel: The trip page is the key entry point in the conversion funnel for bookings. Through the implementation of conversion rate optimisation project, we developed primary metrics and implemented A/B testing to drive an increase in booking conversions by 18%.

Last Minute Deals: With a yield driven revenue model, last minute promotional deals are key to maximising trip profitability. Working with a UX designer, we developed two concept designs which were A/B tested to receive real-time performance metrics and to select a winning design.

www.contiki.com

As part of Tough Mudder’s continued expansion as a leading global lifestyle brand, we made a decision to partner with licensees to deliver Tough Mudder events across the world.

As a key member of the International market expansion team, I was responsible for developing international market launch plans, identifying potential licensed partners, on-boarding of new licensee teams, providing on-going support and advice and delivering sales reporting and analysis to key stakeholders.

When launching in new markets, we activated a cross-channel marketing strategy tailored by local knowledge and consumer insights. This included activation across PR, Partnerships, paid media, social media, Influencers, and ATL media channels including TV, print, OOH and radio. Local knowledge and customer segments were identified, and products adapted to local markets including shorter distances, replacement of mud with sand for the desert, removal of alcohol, and brand positioning changes as relevant to appeal to local customers.

Within 2 years, we were able to launch Tough Mudder in more than 12 new International markets including New Zealand, China, Egypt, Mexico, South Africa, Indonesia (Bali), United Arab Emirates, Oman, Ireland and the Philippines.

More than 3 million participants have crossed the Tough Mudder finish line, earning their orange headband, and becoming a member of our legendary team. That incredible year-round connection with our devoted and highly engaged community is what gives partners such a powerful, and unique opportunity to integrate their brand messaging in a real and meaningful way.

In my role as Vice President, Marketing for International markets I was heavily involved in working with brand partners including being a key member of the initial pitch process, partnership marketing ideation and working with partners to deliver engaging, authentic, and organic campaigns featured across Tough Mudder events, web, email, social and digital channels.

Below are some of the marketing partner campaigns that we developed with our awesome brand partners;

Samsung: To celebrate the launch of their new 360 camera, we partnered with Samsung to develop a hanging ring activation in the Tough Mudder event base area where participants could receive a 360 selfie. Based on customer insight that our audience were looking for social proof to share on their social media channels, the activation offered high value to participants and gave Samsung a platform to promote their new camera. The partnership was also supported through paid media, a dedicated CRM program and social campaign.

Jeep: As a partner for more than 4 years, we developed a number of creative and innovative partnership activations with Jeep including;

• Launch of “JeepFest” featuring a live DJ booth performing from a converted Renegade to energise contestants progressing through the Mud Mile obstacle.

• Launch of a limited edition Tough Mudder branded Jeep Renegade. With 100 co-branded orange Jeeps available, we developed a TV commercial to promote this exciting collaboration. The launch was announced through a cross-channel campaign including social media, paid media, CRM & PR.

Virgin Active: As Tough Mudder’s official fitness partner, Virgin Active signed a three-year deal to give Tough Mudder participants and gym members in-club training in preparation for their upcoming event. The new training program was launched with a PR announcement inviting journalists to train at Virgin Atlantic for an upcoming Tough Mudder event.

Soap & Glory: Soap and Glory came on board as a partner to sponsor Tough Mudder shower stations, featuring Soap & Glory products. Simple, but highly effective - customers were thrilled with the upgraded showering facilities, Soap & Glory were thrilled as it encouraged trial of their products.

Brewdog: As Tough Mudder’s official “finisher drink” partner, craft beer Bewdog came on board offering the ultimate finisher IPA celebration. Mudder’s wearing their finisher headbands at selected Brewdog bars were also able to claim a complimentary beer on arrival to celebrate the partnership, encouraging foot traffic into bars and trial of new IPA products.

Lucozade Sport: In partnership with Lucozade Sport, Tough Mudder developed a series of training content helping support Lucozade’s “Made to Move campaign” designed to inspire more than one million people all over the UK to get moving.

Britvic: Fruit Shoot: In partnership with Britvic Fruit Shoot, we created a Tough Mudder event designed for kids aged 6-12 years named “Fruit Shoot Mini Mudder”. The events in partnership with Fruit Shoot helped to deliver their health piller, by educating and encouraging consumers to make healthier choices. Each year we welcomed more than 20,000+ kids to the Mini Mudder event.

Help for Heroes Charity Partnership: As the UK’s official charity partner, Help for Heroes supports soldiers and veterans that live with an injury or illness sustained while active in the British Armed Forces. Through creative PR collaborations and content marketing, we were able to drive awareness and together fundraise more than £3 million.

Other partnerships include: Snickers, Olympus, Merrell, Volvic, Head & Shoulders, Lyft, Sky Sports, Kingstone Press, and Toyo Tyres.

Lonely Planet uses search to drive sales of guidebooks, apps and ebooks through the online shop as well as bookable travel products (hotels, activities and insurance).

Paid media was managed with a small in-house team that were responsible for managing day-to-day management of the account. As our digital footprint grew, I was given the task to expand our campaigns globally across 96 countries and diversify our current campaigns beyond Google Adwords into Bing, social and display.

Following an RFP process for a performance advertising platform, we made the decision to implement Marin bid management software. Marin integrated with our Adobe Omniture analytics package and product feed from Intelligent Reach, and allowed us to scale our campaigns across 750,000 keywords, delivering results they would not have been able to achieve manually with our current team.

Within 3 months of implementation, we were able to launch campaigns on Facebook, Twitter, GDN and Bing and saw a 38% reduction in CPC, 109% increase in CTR, 8% increase in conversions and 50% increase in profit.

Since 1973, Lonely Planet has helped travellers discover, plan and book their perfect trip. With the idea of wanting to share our love for travel and the planet with the next generation of explorers, the Lonely Planet Kids sub-brand was born.

With a new range of exciting kids titles available, we were given the task to establish an online presence and digital launch for the new sub-brand. The launch involved the development of a new website (www.lonelyplanetkids.com) which included functionality for both parents and kids including the ability to peek inside (and buy) the new books, download teaching packs and activity sheets, download the World Atlas app, watch videos, and meet the authors and illustrators who worked on the books (and more).

The go-to-market communications plan included; online media (PPC & video), social media, academic partnerships, influencer outreach, CRM and PR.

PROJECT LINKS:

Lonely Planet Kids website

How to be a Space Explorer video

Contiki Holidays are the market leaders in youth holiday travel for 18-35s. With a millennial customer, Contiki’s audience was shifting away from traditional media channels, resulting in a divergence of media channel strategy and increased acquisition costs.

The data was clear, millennial audiences were watching less TV, had increased skepticism of advertising, and preferred short-form video content with more than 70% of millennials watching YouTube content at least once a week and 45% watching travel videos before planning a trip.

We identified the opportunity to partner with YouTube content creators (vloggers) to launch “The Roadtrip” travel series, a first of its kind campaign revolutionizing the way that brands engaged with YouTube content creators.

The series brings YouTube stars to a chosen destination to document their experiences on their channels, as well as releasing behind-the-scenes footage of the trip of Contiki’s branded channel. Fan meetups are also held in cities along the way of the trip, attracting thousands of fans.

The Roadtrip has featured some of YouTube’s biggest stars including Joey Graceffa, Smosh’s Anthony Padilla, Charles Trippy, and Troye Sivan.

Following its launch success, the Roadtrip became an annual event for Contiki with the first two trips receiving 26 million views on YouTube, 1.4 million likes, and 100,000 comments.

LINKS:

The Roadtrip - Contiki Europe - Episode 1

The Roadtrip - Contiki Australia - Episode 6