BMF - British Marine Federation

10/14/2021 | News release | Distributed by Public on 10/14/2021 08:44

The MTM Agency lands Gold in CIPR PRide Awards for Fairline Yachts' Virtual Marina

Published on: 14 October 2021

The MTM Agencyhas won a Gold award for 'Best Use of Digital and Social Media' in this year'sCIPR PRide Awards.

The awards, hosted virtually this year by former BBC Breakfast presenterLouise Minchin, saw the agency take home the top award for its work with Fairline Yachtsduring the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fairline, one of the UK's leading luxury yacht builders, quickly recognised that due to the COVID-19 restrictions in place, it needed to provide a digital solution for customers to explore its range of yachts from the comfort and safety of their own homes. With boat show season representing a critical time for the leisure marine industry, the yacht builder needed to find a way to replace the loss of contact with its audience quickly and to create a robust roll-out to its global dealer network and audience around the world.

The functionality not only needed to include 360-degree live tours but a live chat feature, encouraging customers to ask questions and reach out to dealers in real-time. Within days, MTM had designed and developed a new, bespoke digital platform enabling Fairline's customers to browse the range from the comfort and safety of their own home with strong signposting and opportunities to engage with the brand and local dealers around the world.

Enabling Fairline's customers to have detailed tours of all the yachts and for them to speak directly to a Fairline dealer at any time was central to the solution.

The agency also developed a regular calendar of livestream yacht tours hosted by Fairline's dealer network from across the globe, giving customers the chance to be walked through the vessel, ideal for showcasing hidden details.

The platform achieved over 10,000 engagements and over 40,000 views of its videos during the first week. To read the full case study on the Virtual Marina, visit the MTM websitehere.

Richard Broughton, associate director at The MTM Agency said: "We are delighted to have won this award for delivering a digital solution for our client, Fairline Yachts. Due to our wide offering of brand, digital services, social media and PR, we're able to bring together the best mix of our skills to meet whatever the client's objective is - in Fairline's case this was to not only create the platform, but then to use digital and social communications to get as many visitors as possible to the platform and quickly. Fairline is a major player in the marine industry with a rich heritage dating back to the 1960s and we're very proud to work with its fantastic, inspirational team.

"With our sizable and experienced team, we were able to deliver the platform rapidly but without compromising on quality or user experience. To win this award for our work during such unprecedented times is a very welcome acknowledgment of the efforts of the whole MTM team. We'd also like to say well done to all those shortlisted. We were amongst some impressive competition so to come out on top is fantastic."