Testimonial - Sykes. TV Commercial Production.

After our Sykes Holiday Cottages campaign took off, we chatted with Bob Atkinson to understand why he chose to team up with ABF and what he’s learned from working with us. Here’s what he had to say:

I'm Bob Atkinson, and I'm the business development manager at Sykes holiday cottages.

Choosing ABF for our 2023 campaign. It came down to a range of things at the end of the day. They got off to a fantastic start because the initial contacts were fantastic, warm, friendly, engaging. When we met with the team, they were inquisitive. They wanted to know more about us and it was really clear that they were keen to try to solve the problems that we had. But it was the passion, the enthusiasm, the real creativity of the actual original idea. It was what they were proposing to do that we thought feels real. It felt like it could work with us really well as a brand, stand out from what our competitors are doing and move us forward on the journey we want to go on.

What ABF were really quickly able to demonstrate—and they began doing this on the lead up to the shoot, to be fair—was allaying fears that all the organisation was going to work, people were going to be in the right places at the right time to do the things they needed to do, wearing the clothes they needed to have with all the props, etc. It was really evident that they were super, super organised and they were always throughout all that process friendly, very approachable and you were considered very much part of the process. I felt made to feel like part of the family during that time and that gave you a huge amount of confidence.

On this particular project, when the original idea had been pitched to us, ABF actually created a mini film. The edit process then was relatively easy; we had something that we were shooting from an idea we had visually seen quite clearly. We had a really strong feel of what it would look, feel, and sound like. Throughout that process, whilst there was toing and froing, it was clear, simple, easy. We were able to make decisions very quickly, take advice from the agency when we needed it and they were willing to take any challenges back from us. We all had that shared vision of what we were trying to get to, and because they executed the filming so well, it was relatively easy to piece all that together.

The campaign on Boxing Day and analysing those results in the first five or six weeks—the really exciting thing for us as a business—was actually seeing the huge increase in the download of our app. Our app has been quite instrumental in recent years in the growth that we're looking for. We know that people who engage with that app and download it are much more likely to book with us on a regular basis, with higher booking values and all that kind of thing. So having it featured within the main TV advert and then through a lot of the assets that we were using across PPC and social, we've seen a 600% increase year on year in downloading of that, which is way above the targets we set. That has worked really hard. Making sure the creative featured the use of Sykes on a mobile phone and having that call to action at the end has made a massive difference. That straightaway has been fantastic. That continuation of strong brand traffic in what is a really challenging time has been really, really good, and we're just confident that's going to pay off as the year goes on in that continuation of bookings.

It's been a really enjoyable process. You've issued a brief and the guys at ABF have understood that brief and communicated how they've understood that brief to you. It's because they get it and they get what it is you're trying to do with your audience. That's certainly what we've experienced in this process. I think they've been really good to work with, really, really good to work with. I'd happily endorse anyone going into a process with them to understand what they can deliver for you. Hear them out, give them that chance to pitch their ideas to you, and you never know—you may also come up with a creative that's not only really satisfying but also actually going to deliver the goods.