Hurtigruten Expedition Voyages has been an iconic travel brand in Norway since 1893, but is unknown to most adventure travelers in the United States. Its Norway coastal voyages on the ferry that has been delivering the mail since 1897 are experiential, cultural, and active. The company had high expectations for its entrance to the North American market and introduced new active (and higher priced) expeditions to places like Antarctica. With a funny name, no history of advertising or lead generation in the U.S., and well-known competitors like Lindblad Expeditions and Quark, the company’s biggest challenges in the North American Market were brand awareness and lead generation. In addition, the average price point of $12,000 per person made these a considered purchase with an average purchase period of up to two years after joining the list.

To introduce the U.S. market to the brand and its products, I initiated a brand partnership and promotion with Geocaching.com. The demographics of the geocaching audience were very consistent with the potential customers we were seeking for soft adventure cruises:

• The geocaching audience is huge and enthusiastic – there are more than 1.3 million geocachers in the United States and growing
• Geocachers are already spending money on travel and actively and enthusiastically share their adventures on social media
• Geocachers are very active and everywhere, with broad demographics that encompass all groups within the Hurtigruten personas, from millennials, to families, to retirees

History and Objectives

Before I arrived as the first Marketing Director for North America, the primary list building efforts were limited to brochure mailing lists purchased from list brokers. The company did no consumer advertising, but focused primarily on the travel trade community. Previous email marketing strategies included sweepstakes, purchases from list brokers, and “send them the same email 100 times until they purchase.”

The objectives of this geocaching program were to:

• Build brand awareness for a new and unknown brand in a large market
• Modernize the marketing toolkit and lead generation program
• Perform a more targeted search for new leads in a demographic with similar behavioral characteristics and interests
• Get new leads into the database and begin building a relationship with the Hurtigruten brand through brochures, content, in-person events, and email newsletters
• Broaden the prospect list and build a new campaign segment to test against older and underperforming segments
• Establish a more qualified, recent, self-selected, and engaged list

We put 3,000 trackable pieces into “the game,” originating in the US. Geocachers located in the United States were encouraged to demonstrate what it means to them to live the Hurtigruten tagline “Connect with your Inner Explorer.” Geocachers were encouraged to take photos with a trackable game piece and share them on social media using the campaign hashtags #HGInnerExplorer #contest. The winner of the photo contest received a 7-day Cruise North in Norway for two guests. Additional prizes for 11 other winners included Hurtigruten-branded outerwear and mugs.

I worked with the Geocaching team to produce the following collateral:

• 3,000 geocaching trackable tokens with the Hurtigruten brand and URL and with penguins and polar bears
• An introductory email that was sent to the US geocaching community
• A blog post on the Geocaching site
• A landing page for the contest and an interactive map that showed the real-time location of all active trackables and a history of where they had traveled
• Social and email promotion of the contest
• Two banner ads to promote the contest

Campaign Results

The campaign generated incredible awareness in the US for the brand both in the long term and the short term:

• In five years, the trackable game pieces have traveled more than 28 million miles with a direct call to action to the Hurtigruten website.
• Even after the end of the contest, the trackable pieces stay in the game for years, continuing to travel and generate brand awareness. All pieces originated in the US and have traveled to more than 62 different countries. Every time a geocacher brings the game piece somewhere they learn about the brand and expeditions.
• Total landing page views: 25,635 in three months
• Average time spent on page: 1:52 minutes in three months
• More than 1.18 million impressions promoting Hurtigruten and the contest
• 928 contest entries with photo submissions (and new engaged leads to the database) shared at #HGinnerexplorer in three weeks
• Winners were promoted across social media and to the Geocaching user base
• 4,238 requests for the 3,000 tokens within two weeks; when they received their tokens, they also received a postcard that encouraged them to sign up for the email newsletter and request a brochure
• 4,000 email opt-ins and brochure requests
• 3,527 geocaching accounts that moved a trackable piece in three months, with more engagement for years. One notable gamepiece traveled almost 40,000 miles in three months
• A cost per lead that was one-eighth the acquisition cost of social media lead generation efforts