This Travel Brand’s Investing $5 Million in Climate Week Ads

Last year, sustainable tour company Intrepid Travel spent $1 million on an ad blitz during Climate Week NYC. This year, the brand is doing it again but with a $5 million budget and a campaign called “Only Intrepid.”

The goal of last year’s campaign, “Good Trips Only,” was to expand the Australia-based company’s brand awareness in the U.S., offering American, sustainability-interested travelers a more environmentally conscious and culturally sensitive approach to travel through carbon-neutral, small-group trips led by local, on-the-ground staff.

“We’re not a household brand in the U.S.,” Natalie Placko, general manager of brand at Intrepid Travel, told ADWEEK. “We want to be.”

This spring, the company unveiled an ambitious growth strategy, aiming to double its customer base to reach 600,000 travelers by 2030. It’s also opening an office on the West Coast to support its U.S. expansion.

It wasn’t in the plan to launch another new brand campaign this year at Climate Week NYC, Placko said, but the numbers from last year compelled her to reconsider.

“We saw a growth of 32% in direct traffic and 47% growth in organic traffic,” Placko said. “But the most important metric is always revenue growth for us, [and] we saw a 20% revenue growth for New York within that eight-month period during and after the campaign ran.”

This year’s campaign also puts Intrepid Travel’s name more clearly at the center of the campaign, she explained. While “Good Trips Only” captured the spirit and purpose of Intrepid, the new campaign drills into more on the specific moments that “Only Intrepid” can reliably create through small-group trips, local guides, and a comprehensive strategy to reduce environmental impact.

Intrepid’s campaign launches today with more than 1,000 assets demonstrating the wide variety of experiences that its trips can offer. The ads will take over Madison Square Garden and show up on taxi toppers, in the subways, on billboards, wild postings, hand-painted murals, and in Penn Station. The media buy also includes digital, TV, radio, podcast, and print.

Beyond New York City, the out-of-home campaign will run in Toronto, London, and four Australian cities (Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and Auckland).

“[Climate Week NYC is] a great time to be in market,” Placko said. “We just needed to get a little bit more punchy, a little bit more clear about who we are, what we do, and why we do it, and really bring people into our community.”

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