Awards winner (2026)🏅 Grand Prix (2026) 🏆
Visit Britain: Starring GREAT Britain
Brand:
Visit Britain
Entered by:
OMD Germany
Credits:
OMD Germany, OMD Media Agency OmniGOV, Tag Worldwide, Pablo Creative Agency
Category:
Travel & Tourism
Strategic Solution
People do not choose destinations from facts.
They choose them from feelings.
And increasingly, those feelings come from stories.
Streaming culture has changed how people discover the world. Audiences build emotional connections with places long before they ever visit them.
VisitBritain research showed that one in six visitors to the UK already travels to film and television locations outside London.
That insight led us to a different audience.
Not travellers.
Fans.
People who watch, follow, and care about stories. People who want to step inside the worlds they love.
We called them CineTravellers.
Britain had a unique advantage with this audience. From the Highlands to London streets, it has served as the backdrop to some of the world’s most recognisable films and series.
The problem was that audiences loved the scenes without connecting them to real destinations.
So, our strategy was to close that gap.
Rather than asking people to consider Britain as a holiday destination, we would help them recognise Britain as the setting behind the stories they already loved.
By transforming familiar fictional worlds into real travel opportunities, we could turn passive affection into active consideration and inspire audiences to experience Britain for themselves.
Content Solution
We turned Britain into the movie you can visit.
Starring GREAT Britain was a four-minute cinematic film built entirely from scenes audiences already loved.
Hogwarts in the Highlands.
Bridgerton’s Bath.
Bond’s London.
Paddington’s adventures.
Dragons over British castles.
The film brought together footage from fourteen iconic film and television productions, creating a trailer that felt like a blockbuster release rather than a tourism campaign.
At first glance, viewers believed they were watching a movie trailer.
Big stories.
Big characters.
Big emotion.
Then came the reveal.
These were not fictional worlds.
They were real places.
And people could visit them.
The film was made possible through an unprecedented collaboration between VisitBritain and major studios, including Disney, Warner Bros., Netflix, HBO, Paramount, and Sony.
Instead of showcasing destinations through conventional tourism imagery, we showcased them through the stories that had already made them famous.
The creative idea was simple.
If audiences had already fallen in love with these places through film and television, we didn’t need to persuade them to care.
We simply needed to help them recognise where those places really were.
The result was a piece of content that blurred the line between entertainment and tourism marketing, transforming Britain from a backdrop into the star of the story.
Media/Content Amplification Solution
To reach CineTravellers, we followed the way they already consume stories.
We stopped chasing travellers and started showing up in film culture.
The campaign launched across cinema, video-on-demand, film media, podcasts, and digital outdoor across the UK’s largest inbound visitor markets, specifically, Germany, our largest European market.
The trailer ran before major cinema releases, placing Britain in the same environment where audiences discover new films.
On YouTube and broadcaster catch-up platforms, it appeared while viewers were actively choosing what to watch.
We also partnered with Filmstarts, Germany’s largest movie website, integrating the trailer into film reviews, listings, and browsing journeys.
Film podcasts, including Leinwandliebe and Streamgestöber extended the story by discussing the real locations behind famous scenes.
Digital outdoor placements surrounded premiere moments, including the releases of Paddington and Bridget Jones, as well as the Berlinale Film Festival – one of Germany’s biggest movie events.
Digital placements adjacent to cinema listings and announcements then helped audiences take the next step, connecting iconic scenes to real destinations across Britain.
Every channel played a specific role.
Cinema created emotion.
Film environments added credibility.
Digital channels captured intent.
Outdoor extended cultural visibility.
Together, they recreated the journey from viewer to visitor.
See it. Recognise it. Go there.
Travel & Tourism | Winner🏅 Grand Prix 🏆
"A confident, simple campaign that recognised people’s existing emotional connection to Britain through film and TV, and turned that connection into real travel destinations, shifting the conversation from winning tourists to winning fans. An ambitious collaboration between studios, rights holders and tourism partners, delivered through a clear, memorable and insightful idea, and exceptionally well written. Judges singled this out as a staggeringly simple but effective campaign, with a clear strategy and genuine commercial impact."
– Judges comments.
Results
The campaign proved that people respond differently when tourism behaves like entertainment.
Media impact:
- The campaign generated more than 40 million contacts in Germany, including 11 million views of a four-minute film.
- It delivered VisitBritain’s strongest media ROI in Germany since COVID, returning £11 for every £1 invested.
Brand impact:
- Brands awareness increased by +13 percentage points, rising from 26% to 39% year-on-year.
- Consideration also increased by 1%, demonstrating that audiences were looking beyond familiar perceptions of Britain and considering new destinations across the country.
Business impact:
- The campaign generated £27 million in incremental value from German visitors.
- The effect continued beyond the campaign period, with UK inbound visits forecast to reach 44.1 million in 2026, up 4% year-on-year.
People already felt connected to Britain. We simply helped them realise it.
