The brief was simple, but challenging: Neilson Holidays wanted to rank higher for a whole number of winter sports holiday relayed terms. The solution lay in a simple but polarising insight, that helped the brand steal an additional 2% of the market, a 79% growth in organic search and a 7% YOY revenue increase. 

Type into a search engine 'Where to ski' or 'where to snowboard' and you'll get some fairly functional answers and content. But type in 'what's better, snowboarding or skiing' and you'll rapidly realise that winter sports is divided by an ancient tribalism. Make your searches more human based, with 'Who's beter, skiers of boarders' and you've lit the blue touch paper. 

Identifying this rivalry and tapping into it enabled us to create a campaign that riffed on the energy that already existed. Sometimes creativity needs only to give a stage to a real human cultural truth. We never sought to solve the debate, but meraly wanted to stoke the banter. And what better to take it to the next level and get some total experts involved. As Team GB Park and Pipe athletes, Jamie Nicholls and Katie Summerhayes are at the top of their game for snowboarding and skiing, respectively. They're actually friends. But you perhaps wouldn't know it if you watched this video that we shot with them at an indoor ski centre one day in November. Sparks fly.

And the accompanying web page on the Neilson Holidays website gave the ski and board going public the chance to join in with the banter. We had a poll to see who came on on top for various factors, There were skier jokes about boarders and boarder jokes about skiers. People posted videos and images of happenings on the piste and the campaign took off. So did search visibility and sales. 

Facebook alone generated over 30,000 visits to the Neilson site, with 25.4k people watching the video. That, and 27 pieces of coverage achieved a 15% increase in search visibility and a 79% growth in organic search. And with numerous terms moved to positions #1 and #2 in rankings, this challenger brand stole a massive 2% increased share of a big market . 

The only question remains is 'which side are you on?'

Here's the case study, if you want to share how grown up and measurably more effective creative can make the difference: