Over the course of last week, Londoners may have spotted a flurry of lost animal posters for a missing alpaca, monkey, and reindeer across the capital.
The strange case of exotic animals disappearing across London and other major European cities is the latest campaign from travel scale-up WeRoad, offering a discount code for its 2023 itineraries to those inquisitive enough to join the search for these animals via the posters’ QR code.
Launching in key cities across France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK, unbranded posters from the campaign were shared far and wide by inquisitive adventurers across social media – from London to Paris, Milan to Madrid.
In London alone, posters were snapped and shared from Camden, Shoreditch, Notting Hill, Clapham, Covent Garden, London Bridge and Dalston.
The unbranded posters calling for help finding Jeremy the alpaca, Mike the monkey and Rupert the reindeer drove those curious enough to scan the QR code to the WeRoad site, highlighting upcoming 2023 itineraries where these curious critters can be found on WeRoad’s real-world trips.
The initiative, dubbed ‘Missing Animals’, is the latest global guerrilla marketing campaign from WeRoad to launch the solo travel expert brand’s new digital promotion offering adventurers from 16th January discounts of up to £200 off travel with WeRoad on selected trips from May 2023.
Born in Italy in 2017, WeRoad is now available in five markets including Spain, UK, Germany, and France, and has already brought over 60,000 travellers to more than 190 destinations worldwide.
‘Missing Animals’ is the latest in a string of global guerrilla marketing campaigns WeRoad has launched, which has included everything from paper planes flown in co-working spaces across all its markets to satirical political ads during the Italian elections.
On the ‘Missing Animals’ campaign, Margherita Galluzzo, Head of Global Brand Marketing at WeRoad, said: “Travelling the world is often a topic of conversation in the office. One day, we were discussing how we missed all the beautiful creatures we encountered on our travels. And that’s exactly what inspired this campaign.
To bring that longing for travel and seeing these wonderful animals, we developed our unbranded missing animals’ posters and took to the streets of London, Berlin, Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, Milan, Rome, Naples and Bologna.
All the animals we have chosen can be met on the itineraries most loved by our community: the wild reindeer of Iceland, the monkeys of the jungles of Thailand or the temples in Nepal, the alpacas in Peru and Colombia.”
The campaign generated 20,000 landing page visits and resulted in hundreds of social media shares containing the mention of WeRoad’s accounts in all countries.