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Signature Safaris

Posted Friday, September 26th, 2008 by Neil Edwards

We are proud of all the work we do here at The Marketing Eye, but every now and again a job comes along that gets everybody even more motivated and engaged than normal. This is certainly the case with Signature Safaris and we are delighted to announce the launch of its new website today.


Simon Lacey, the Managing Director, contacted us at the beginning of the year following a referral by Sussex Enterprise. We were interested and delighted that Simon took the precaution of telephoning some of our clients before getting in touch with us and, fortunately, they all said the right things!

When Simon contacted us, the business was trading as Diplomatic Travel and had been so for 20 years or more. There were two main strings to the business: fully inclusive tours to Southern Africa and a jazz tour to New Orleans. The jazz-tour side of the business was steadily recovering from the disaster of Hurricane Katrina a few years ago, but it was the safari side of the business that Simon recognised he needed to grow.

Our first task was to help Simon with a new name and identity. The business had moved on its offering and yet the brand and the identity still reflected the business of 20 years ago. Brand development is a process that we at The Marketing Eye feel we understand very well and the starting point is always to identify and understand the target market. We identified 4 customers types:

• Trendy traveller (holidays as a status symbol; follows fashion; brand aware)


• Once in a lifetime (outside of target group, invests everything to join once)


• Adventure seeker (seeks the thrill of doing something outside of the norm)


• Intense nature lover (travels extensively to see nature first-hand)

The main targets for our client were agreed as the 'trendy traveller' and the softer 'adventure seeker'. Typically these are brand-conscious, professional couples in their early to mid 40’s, with dual income, with or without children, an executive lifestyle and an appetite for 3 or more holidays a year.

In a highly competitive market, in which it is difficult to identify a true USP, the essence of the Diplomatic Travel business lay in the personal service provided by Simon and his small team. They all have high professional standards, true expertise (they wouldn’t offer to organise a trip to a part of the world that they didn’t know intimately) and a true sense of concern for the client.

Our challenge was to create a brand that met the needs of the target audience, portrayed the intimate, caring side of the business and yet positioned it to compete with the much larger travel operators.

After a thorough process (and two or three false starts) we settled on the name Signature Safaris. Signature Safaris was felt to communicate the commitment to use all available knowledge, experience and contacts to construct a holiday that was unique and truly tailor-made to the client’s exact requirements. The holiday would define both the company and the client. The strap-line 'quality beyond imagination' and the remaining elements of the identity followed shortly thereafter.

The primary execution has been the new website: an attractive, easy to navigate and information rich site that has turned into a labour of love for all of us over the past few months. We still have a few steps to go to make it even better, but we can't help share it with everybody now. Take a look, enjoy and dream! Hey, don't stop there...book!

Building the site is, of course, only the beginning of the process and we hope to work with Simon and his team long into the future to help the business grow.

Thank you, Simon, for commissioning the site and pushing all of us here at The Marketing Eye to give of our very best. We hope that it brings you great success.

Posted Friday, September 26th, 2008 by Neil Edwards

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