Sandals - Sandman coming to the UK

Sandals wanted to instigate a campaign announcing the UK search for the ‘Sandman’ apprentice. The Sandals Sandman looks after all the beaches at their resorts ensuring they are perfect and offer the best beach experience possible to guests throughout the year.

The timing of the campaign was key to promote Sandals resorts during a key booking period and to communicate that Sandals had a new hotel opening in January.

Markettiers4dC worked to generate the required interest through a broadcast campaign taking in radio, TV and online portals, utilizing the Sandman as the spokesperson.

The schedule of stations for radio interviews was a good balance of BBC and regional commercial stations, covering the majority of UK regions with a focus on coastal areas. BBC Radio 5 LIVE’s inclusion meant that we were able to deliver live coverage on a national scale for the story and this was complimented by coverage on other high calibre regional stations including BBC South West and BBC Cornwall.

To add an additional local hook to the story we used data from the Blue Flag awards to draw parallels between Sandals beaches and those found here in the UK.

The online sell in yielded video coverage on the Guardian online jobs section as well as dedicated travel sites – Travel Bite and Plans 2 Travel.

The story also ran on the ITV’s Alan Titchmarsh show as a live read which incorporated images of beautiful tropical beaches as well as elaboration on the apprenticeship competition. He engaged with the story further by inviting his guests to offer their thoughts on the prospect of being a Sandman and concluded by mentioning the website.

The radio interviews were played out over 22 stations and reach an audience of nearly 8 million, with online coverage across six websites for 13 weeks and one national TV opportunity, the campaign was an veritable success.