About the client
Art of Safari is an independent South African bespoke travel company specialising in luxury African safaris. The company approaches the competitive tourism market through engaging in considered conversations with clients who aim to realise their specific African dream. Rather than selling packages, Art of Safari’s specialist approach includes personalised service curated for individual clients.
The company is a financially bonded member of the South African Tourism Services Association, which has been setting high standards of professionalism and financial integrity in South African tourism since 1969. Art of Safari partners only with responsible service providers that are able to uphold nature conservation regulations and sustainable business practices.
Business challenge
Art of Safari required an agency to develop their brand identity and create a web presence that would generate demand for their unique, digitally driven tourism offering. After exploring their options, they selected Kri8it, based on our depth of experience in branding strategy, identity design, web development and design, social media strategy and management, digital marketing and content development. We managed – and continue to handle – all of these services for Art of Safari.
Brand identity
An early challenge was to develop a brand identity that tied in with the brand’s premium, authentic personality, while still remaining original in the competitive tourism sector. The Kri8it design team researched the market and explored a variety of creative avenues for the logo, font and colour palette.
Following a consultation process with the client, the final logo was crafted.
Next, Kri8it turned to creating a corporate identity that reflects the authentic nature of the brand. The result is clean, minimal and memorable.
Website
Kri8it took a strong ‘mobile-first’ approach when developing the website and user experience, anticipating that most of the target market would be active on hand-held devices. The team ensured that design, usability, creativity and content functioned seamlessly and in line with the brand.
“The aim was to create an engaging, informative and user-friendly online experience that echoed the premium quality of the safari holidays on offer.”
The team settled on UxPin as the wire-framing, prototyping and designing tool, enabling them to easily jump between mobile and desktop design. Keeping working design trends at the forefront of the process, the final design was again minimalistic and incorporated smooth user flow, ease of navigation and a clean look and feel. Additional attention during design was given to mono-line icons for various entry and action points, carousel components, button styles, icon hovers, differing interactions, form styles and form fields.
Digital and social media marketing
Next, the team began working on a digital and social marketing strategy, which included paid advertising and content plans. Over a 12-month period, the team ran multiple Facebook, Instagram and Google AdWords campaigns in order to both build the brand and sell tours. The campaign data was constantly reviewed and analysed in order to adjust any methods to obtain optimum results and maximise the available budget.
Kri8it was also assigned responsibility for creating and managing the Art of Safari Facebook and Instagram accounts. During the launch phase, one highlight was the ‘WIN a Luxury African Safari’ competition (with a prize value of $14,000). The competition was promoted using Facebook and Instagram advertising.
A specialised landing page was set up for the campaign, resulting in a lead conversion rate of almost 60%. On Instagram, the brand’s cost per acquisition was less than $0.60.
Kri8it looks forward to continuing its work on this project as Art of Safari grows.
