Celtic Routes: Rebrand and Brand Project Management

Celtic Routes are an independent travel company with a difference.

They combine a fleet of expedition-prepared luxury Land Rovers with curated routes, best-in-class excursions and activities, and boutique accommodation that ensures the self-drive holiday of a lifetime.

Graham and Alexia bought the business because they saw its potential. With their passion for travel and Land Rovers, coupled with their business knowledge, they set out to grow the brand.

“Our brand didn’t do a good job of representing the quality of our product or the values of our organisation. It was rather cliche and significantly unsophisticated compared to the luxury market we operate in.

Fliss was a good fit for us, bringing big company experience but focusing on helping small companies like us to use their brand to thrive. She got what we were trying to do straight away.”

A multi-stage approach

It was important that we didn’t launch straight into a rebrand. Graham and Alexia needed to get their existing brand communications working for their upcoming season of sales. I brought in So Contented to work alongside me with this through their brand voice and content expertise.

We conducted research with existing and previous customers to understand what Celtic Routes do well at both the planning stage, and within their tours. From here, we plotted their customer touchpoints to understand how we could quickly improve the experience.

This meant crafting clearer and more coherent digital ads along with a structured email marketing funnel that nurtures people who enquire and builds trust with the brand before launching into a sales process. We also refreshed the website that Graham and Alexia had inherited to better reflect Celtic Routes and drive leads when potential customers reach it through the marketing campaign we had set up.

With this up and running - and making a big impact - we embarked on the rebrand project.

Inspiration and intention

The rebrand began by setting out Celtic Routes’ brand strategy. They hadn’t an established identity and needed to stand out and build a great reputation within their sector. Defining the strategy enabled Graham and Alexia to set out their intentions for the business moving forward and be clear on exactly who they were targeting.

Working alongside So Contented, who focused on the brand voice and messaging, we created a document setting out what Celtic Routes stands for, what they’re aiming to achieve, how they serve their ideal customers, and exactly who their ideal customers are. Taking the research we conducted at the first stage of the project, we pinpointed detailed customer avatars which led to being able to define specific messaging for their different audience types.

“This helped us to understand what we stand for as a brand, why we operate in the way we do and what motivates us. Fliss has helped us to categorise and understand our clients better which means we find, attract and retain them better than before.”

Everything working together

From here, I supported Graham and Alexia in finding the right specialists to work with when crafting their visual identity, website rebuild and marketing strategy and ongoing delivery. Having a cohesive and joined-up process was important to ensure the strategic work threaded through everything, and ensure the brand Graham and Alexia were investing in was going to perform the best it could.

We worked with Anna in crafting a visual identity that positioned Celtic Routes as a premium brand that stood out from all the others in the luxury travel sector. The visuals reflect Celtic Routes' vision of making the journey matter which highlights the importance of the journey being just as important as the destination - the joy of a self-drive holiday!

Once we had pinpointed the marketing needs of the business, we brought in Laura from Chroma to create and execute a multi-layered marketing strategy. One-Two Digital focused on the digital aspects of Celtic Routes marketing. Finding a team that could work together on a big project (and ongoing basis) and who delivered exactly what Graham and Alexia needed was important for the future of the business's growth.

“Fliss is very organised, flexible, and very responsive. The projects have all been kept on track and all of the deadlines have been met. She’s given us a great new strategy and assembled a team to execute it. Throughout the process she’s been a real partner, and has held our hand and demystified “branding and brand.

She acted more like an internal advisor or part of our team, rather than as an agency or supplier. She’s helped us focus on what we needed to do at each stage rather than getting hung up on building something big and perfect which could cause stumbling blocks. This flexibility and pragmatism has allowed us to see consistent improvements and delivery throughout the process, which has matched our continual growth and evolution as a business.”

Making the journey matter

The process of rebranding helped Celtic Routes to understand more about why they do what they do. It initiated conversations which got them thinking about recruitment and how important it is to find people who are a good fit for their brand and culture, and who understand their mission.

“The external change is enormous - seeing the brand come to life has been incredible and will form the platform of our next stage of growth as we mature from a very small husband and wife team to a small and successful company.
On top of that, over the year of working together we’ve tripled sales and aim to triple again next year.”