The challenge

Parkdean Resorts are the biggest UK staycation accommodation provider in the UK, and wanted to increase ranking for their holiday search terms while also pushing a positive news story in the middle of a very negative news space - Covid19. When people’s moods were down, they wanted a story that would put smiles on faces, getting them talked about in a good way as well as lifting the mood of a beleaguered nation.

Enter the hedgehog.

The idea

In the middle of the second lockdown in the UK in August, we wanted to create a positive news story with a social cause behind it. The news broke that hedgehogs were on the endangered list for the first time, so we jumped on this to create a hibernation holiday park for the animals to keep them safe in winter. We partnered with a hedgehog charity Prickles & Paws to help us create accommodation that the hedgehogs could use on Parkdean Resort parks to keep safe. We created a video with a hedgehog model called Flowers - yes, they exist - and filmed her exploring the miniature holiday park, before hosting it on a dedicated landing page on the website. This was pushed out to journalists in the travel, environment, and lifestyle sectors along with tips on how to look after hedgehogs.

The results

The campaign went viral both on social media and in the press, picking up 227 links in total and appearing on large publications such as Lonely Planet, Travel + Leisure, Mashable UK, BoredPanda, and MSN. The video assets gained 16.4k views on Parkdean Resorts’ YouTube channel as well as an additional 35.9k views from the same video shared on Mashable’s social media. We also discovered that the video was used in 51% of all media coverage gained.

The campaign drove a huge spike in search visibility for a URL that usually sees little traffic throughout winter, with 57 new relevant keywords and 178 improving in rankings. In total, visibility increased from 70% to 85%, with ‘caravan holidays’ going from 7th to 5th.

Pet-friendly holiday keywords went up from an average of 21st to 2.4 in April 2021, seeing ‘dog friendly caravans’ and ‘pet friendly caravans’ both ranking first. The average time on page was 4:21, showing people weren’t just visiting the site - they were staying to watch the video.