Whitbread boost for web strategy with pounds 1m spend

Whitbread is beefing up its online investment tenfold and is taking

a number of its core brands onto the internet as part of a major

strategy shift.

The brewer has appointed Motive Digital Services and web agency Lateral

to develop online campaigns for Boddingtons and Heineken.

The brief is to extend the existing TV campaigns and build a new

communications platform for the brands.

The drive will see Whitbread increase its internet spend from less than

pounds 100,000 to over pounds 1m next year.

Philip Rumbol, director of brand communications at Whitbread, said: ’The

internet is a medium used by our target audience of young adults and is

a core part of our activity. We’ve made a conscious decision to take our

net activity from the fringe and place it at the heart of our

strategy.’

The first element of the activity is to focus on building the

personalities of the stars of the Boddingtons TV ads, Claudia and Graham

the cow.

The characters will have their own chat room as well as featuring in

sketches. In time, a fully branded site will offer merchandising

opportunities.

Heineken is using banner ads on other web sites to invite surfers to win

their share of Heineken’s ’sponsorship budget’ for the Rugby World Cup.

This article was first published on Marketing