Find Your Way (eng)

In 2018, 9 Danish destinations and 5 partners joined forces in the first major joint cycling initiative with VisitDenmark. The ambition was to ensure a strong overall market pressure and effective marketing that could position Denmark as a bicycle destination, primarily in the German market.

The effort was to lead to increased demand and the focal point was the core narrative about Denmark as a cycling destination with a strong focus on communicating and telling the stories about the good cycling experiences that can be found throughout the country.

Find Your Way consisted of two campaign tracks: One to raise awareness of Denmark as a cycling country and one to market Denmark's longest national cycle route of 820 km, the Baltic Sea Cycle Route, which opened in 2018.

Among the objectives were the creation of a long-term concept for transnational use, to ensure new destination content for distribution in all relevant channels and to establish a strategic partnership in 2018 and the years ahead.

The concept Find Your Way was developed specifically for this effort and could be scaled and applied to all elements of the effort – and also used by the partners. Find Your Way was based on the fact that biking creates that special feeling of freedom you get from going out into nature, feeling the wind in your hair, taking things at your own pace, putting everyday life behind you, being together and experiencing something new on two wheels.

The collaboration gave us the opportunity to process cycling tourism on a completely different level than before. The ambition was to use the insight into bicycle tourists' extensive use of maps and routes. The campaign therefore contained an online universe with a digital map of Denmark, where the users could click their way around 35 video stories from special places in Denmark selected by the destinations.

See the campaign site with the map here.

The campaign was aimed primarily at 30-65 year olds with an interest in cycling on their holiday from selected geographical areas in Germany, primarily the northern part. The goal was to inspire and influence reason to go for their next journey.

The primary starting point of the first track was an emotional video on social media with the aim of creating awareness and reach.

Among other things, the video was marketed as YouTube in-stream pre-rolls followed by SoMe advertising with destination stories that generated traffic to the campaign page. The video reached  1,286,600 impressions and was viewed in its full length 598,000 times. That gave it an impressive view through rate of  46.48%!

In Track 2, the marketing of the Baltic Sea Cycle Route was more tactical with greater emphasis on online traffic advertising.

VisitDenmark's own channels were used, and in both tracks both individual and group press trips were arranged to utilize the press value around the opening of the Baltic Sea Cycle Route. The press results in the German market were overwhelming, and in the Netherlands, the press effort led to the Baltic Sea Cycle Route achieving the award as "Europe's best cycling route 2019" at the Dutch cycling and hiking fair in Utrecht.

Campaign period: May - September 2018

Target group: Coast & Nature tourists with an interest for biking on their holiday

Markets: Germany and the Netherlands

Partners: Destination Fyn, Destination Sønderjylland, VisitSydsjælland-Møn, VisitLolland-Falster, VisitVestsjælland, Destination Lillebælt, VisitNordsjælland, VisitHorsens, Destination Hærvejen, Dansk Cykelturisme, Aktiv Danmark, Vejdirektoratet and Vestkystruten.