The government’s £100m-plus global ad campaign to promote the UK overseas is estimated to have brought in £1.2bn in tourism, trade and investment to date, but the next stage of marketing must use more digital advertising, according to a National Audit Office report.
The “Great” Britain campaign, launched by David Cameron to promote brand UK ahead of the London 2012 Olympics, has spent £113.5m on global advertising to date.
Campaign material has included British icons including James Bond, Wallace and Gromit and Paddington Bear.
The push marks the first time the UK has been promoted with a single, co-ordinated brand campaign bringing together partners including VisitBritain, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, the British Council and UK Trade & Investment.
The NAO said that the so far the campaign ad spend had driven an almost tenfold return on investment for the UK.
However Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, pointed out that the £1.2bn is a mix of actual spend and “anticipated” spend.
“[The] campaign investment is based on anticipated as well as actual expenditure by business, tourists and students,” said Morse. “Achieving the full return depends therefore on their intentions being realised as actual spending.”
He also said that the Cabinet Office, which has a team managing the campaign and allotting the ad spend, said that it was not “adequately” making sure that partners were able to spend the cash allotted to them.
“To optimise value for money in future, the campaign needs to allocate resources based on a clear analysis of which partners are likely to generate economic activity of proven benefit to the UK economy,” he said.
The campaign, which has 17 UK government and related organisations using the “Great” brand internationally, has a target of bringing £1.7bn to £1.9bn to the UK economy by 2019-20.
“Increasing its digital activity is a key focus for the next stage of the ‘Great’ campaign,” said Amyas. “In future, the ‘Great’ campaign will need to continue evolving to measure outcomes from digital activity.”
