The Inn Collection Group is a UK-based hospitality business offering food, drink, and accommodation across several venues in the North of England. With a focus on promoting their “Eat, Drink, Sleep, and Explore” brand values, the group caters to a broad target audience, blending local dining experiences with staycation opportunities. To amplify their reach and strengthen customer connections, they leveraged audio advertising as a key marketing tool, using radio to engage listeners and drive awareness of their unique hospitality offerings.
About the Campaign
Purpose
Following the relaunch of four of their flagship venues, The Inn Collection Group wanted to boost brand awareness across their range of offerings, including food, drink, and accommodation. Their goal was to engage a wide audience through an integrated media campaign that would enhance customer recognition and encourage both local dining and broader staycation visits. Audio advertising played a key role in delivering this message to a wide audience.
Action
In collaboration with Bauer Media, the campaign utilised branded content partnerships across multiple radio stations (Metro, TFM, and Greatest Hits) to engage a large regional audience. The campaign featured regular live reads by presenters, on-air trails, and presenter-led competitions, including the popular “12 Stays of Christmas” and a breakfast show blind taste test. Audio advertising ensured the brand’s message was consistently heard by a highly engaged audience.
Campaign Assets
- Radio: On-air presenter reads, competition tags, live reads, and breakfast show segments, all leveraging audio advertising for maximum engagement.
- Digital: Social media video promotion, online competitions, and data capture.
- Multimedia: A combination of audio advertising, digital engagement, and competitions across multiple channels ensured broad reach and deeper engagement.
Client Testimonial
Andrew Robson, PR & Communications Manager, The Inn Collection Group
“This year The Inn Collection Group relaunched four venues, so consistency was essential as we needed to promote both food, drink and accommodation with our ‘Eat, Drink, Sleep, and Explore‘ strapline. A branded content partnership across multiple radio stations gave us great brand association, huge awareness, and allowed us regular copy changes to promote both the meals locally and accommodation further afield.
Partnership tags are shorter messages, so we can regularly change these based on seasonality and offers. Plus, they are aired at the beginning of the ad break, putting us front of mind before any other business. This type of campaign allowed us to spread our budget evenly over a longer period, giving us fantastic exposure throughout the year.
Audio advertising has made a significant contribution to our goals, generating fantastic awareness of our brand and all of our Inns, whilst our competitions have worked wonders for data capture and retargeting. We are very excited to see what the future holds with Bauer Media.
With our recent multi-million-pound reopening of our flagship venue, The Tynemouth Castle Inn, we wanted a promotional campaign that would put us front of mind with listeners. Bauer Media came up with an exciting breakfast show competition with the North East’s favourite presenters – Steve and Karen. The live reads really sold our values and helped drive our key messages of the refurbishment and location. The presenters were hilarious doing a blind taste test, and we received an incredible video which generated a huge response and engagement across Metro Radio and TFM’s social channels combined.
On the back of this, we then wanted to promote our brand and all our Inns. As we have a wide target audience, we wanted to push our message of ‘Eat, Drink, Sleep, and Explore.’ Bauer Media met the brief with a multimedia campaign that included on-air trails, presenter reads, social media, and an engaging online competition that provided us with data capture we could use for targeting in the future.
The 12 Stays of Christmas competition allowed listeners to enter and choose which Inn they wanted to win a staycation at. With daily live reads about each venue, the presenters were passionate with our messaging and helped drive traffic to the online page. Plus, we were able to showcase each site individually.
By utilising all the region’s stations – Metro, TFM, and Greatest Hits – we targeted a wide audience. Overall, the 12 Stays of Christmas campaign generated over 4,000 entries and strengthened our customer database as retargeting is key for our sector. Plus, this competition enabled us to establish which sites were the most popular, so we now have a deep understanding of what venues we need to specifically push this year, helping us with this year’s marketing plan.”_
Success Measures
Over 4,000 entries to the “12 Stays of Christmas” competition.
High engagement from social media video campaigns.
Improved brand visibility across key venues, with data-driven insights on which Inns to prioritise for future marketing.
Summary
The Inn Collection Group successfully leveraged audio advertising to amplify brand awareness and drive engagement across their flagship venues. By partnering with Bauer Media, they executed a branded content campaign across multiple radio stations, integrating live presenter reads, on-air competitions, and digital engagement. The campaign not only enhanced visibility but also delivered data-driven insights for future marketing efforts.
Key activations such as the “12 Stays of Christmas” competition and a breakfast show blind taste test resonated strongly with audiences, generating over 4,000 competition entries and strengthening customer connections. The multimedia approach, spanning radio, social media, and digital platforms, ensured broad reach and deep audience engagement.