Slow Adventure

With high-profile coverage, Lemongrass delivered a strategic UK launch for this sustainable adventure startup.

Founded in 2022, Slow Adventure was a newcomer in the UK adventure travel market when it came to us. It’s a startup venture in every way; transformative and here to challenge established travel brands with a fresh take on adventure travel. Destinations include Scotland, Sweden, Italy, Iceland and Finland, where travellers can experience foraging, sailing, ice fishing and wild camping – and so much more.

Sustainability is a key driver for Slow Adventure. Visitors can feel good about making a meaningful, positive impact through travel. All bookings support small, rural communities, and a percentage of every booking goes directly to supporting regeneration projects in the local area.

This incredible startup chose Lemongrass to launch the brand in the UK, based on the “outstanding work on our target audiences” (their words, not ours!) we’d completed during their first project with us.

The goal was to get the brand recognised and talked about. They wanted to gain coverage in top-tier UK media and focus on sustainable journalists and stories.

Our experience in launching travel brands set us apart and made us Slow Adventure’s top pick. We devised a targeted PR strategy for the UK market, focusing on the USPs of each adventure, and the countries they take place in.

The results? A massive boost to brand visibility, both online and offline. Huge reach in the national press. And a firm footing in search engine results to build the brand in the future.

• Press trip secured for influential Guardian journalist.
• Coverage in FT How To Spend It, The Times, Financial Times, Guardian, Telegraph and many more.
• Total of 53 pieces of coverage.
• 1.3 billion reached.
• 183 brand mentions.
• 23 new backlinks.

Slow Adventure was hitting all the right notes for a future-facing travel startup. Sustainability was at the core of the brand’s values, and the audience was well researched (read our audience and competitor insights outline, to learn more about this).

This proof-of-concept had attracted funding to the brand, and new investors were interested – but the brand needed to demonstrate a real-world appetite from the public in order to win more funding.

And that’s where we came in. With our diligent audience and competitor research, we’d proven the value proposition and the demand. Now, we had to spread the word, and win over the public.

Our research showed that the brand’s values were in tight alignment with certain audience personas, notably the Guardian readership. We had a clear goal of getting them on board for coverage first, to give the brand credibility in that space.

So, we secured exclusive first look coverage of Slow Adventure in The Guardian.

We then set up a press office team and personalised pitching to other media outlets. Through this, we secured coverage in top-tier national press through dedicated editorial, roundup features, and opinion pieces.

Slow Adventure is a complex offering – so we simplified our pitches. We chose to pitch only the most important and relevant element to each publication; either the location, the activity, the brand’s sustainability or the Slow Adventure Impact Fund.

This laser-focus and clarified value to readerships is what drove media pickup.

Coverage in Financial Times HTSI, The Guardian, The Times, Globetrender, Enki, Country & Town House – the brand was everywhere it wanted to be for the launch. Thirty-one pieces of print coverage reached a readership of one million.

Online exposure was even greater. Here, there were 1.3 billion reached, through highly relevant digital publications, with a total of 23 new backlinks created to Slow Adventure's website. Considering the clout of the websites these links are coming from, this will ensure Slow Adventure’s future visibility in search engines.

Learn more about the importance of backlinks

With the brand now successfully off the ground, we tracked which coverage was most successful in driving bookings, to give stakeholders value-led reporting that would allow them to secure more funding.