2014 winner: easyJet, Grand Prix and Long Term Marketing Excellence - case study

From 2010 onwards, easyJet boldly repositioned from a pure low cost proposition, to a customer-centric, affinity-driving brand. Our media strategy also radically shifted, from a historically effective traditional price/response model to a longer-term brand building strategy centred around the campaign theme 'Europe by easyJet'.

Resulting improvements in brand perception, consideration and conversion reaped extraordinary commercial dividends as a result. The less well-known aspect of the story is how marketing would lead the way in delivering rapid transformation across all aspects of the customer journey experience, from the creation of a class-leading Mobile App to booking tools such as Inspire Me, whilst more complex operational changes such as punctuality improvements would take longer to come to fruition.

It was to have a profound impact on two critical audiences:

• internally, it set a highly visible benchmark for easyJet’s commitment to a new customer-centric mindset
• externally, marketing’s ability to provide early evidence of the exceptional potential of the new direction to City analysts and investors would create positive sentiment that set easyJet on a path towards an eventual tripling of its share price

But in typical easyJet style, all these changes were achieved with zero net additional budget assigned to marketing. Funding for the new brand TVC was raised by identifying £6m in savings through efficiency improvements in every aspect of the media mix from CRM, to PPC and ATL executions. ATL spend was actually reduced by 16% YOY in 2013.

The combined impact of the 'Europe by easyJet' campaign and efficiency improvements meant that by 2013, marketing’s annual financial contribution to easyJet had increased by 134% to £203m, a return on investment of 6:1.

To register your interest or to find out how to enter the next Awards for Excellence visit our Awards site.

Login to download the full case study below: