Butlins is one of the most iconic British tourism brands. It epitomizes the English beach holiday and shouts out summer fun. It’s also an innovative marketing business and as such, has become one of the latest organisations to brief the Creative Services Exchange.

Like most large consumer brands much of the activity is above the line, planned and budgeted well in advance. So how do you combine these activities with wanting to do something special. A one-off idea that’s going to take advantage of new marketing techniques – and to do it without impacting on the mainstream marketing budget.

For Butlins, this was about wanting to develop a social app that would allow holidaymakers to send virtual postcards. In the world of social networks, sharing your holiday experiences via Facebook is now more common than writing home via the traditional seaside postcard – so what could be better than combining the same experiences. Having devised the idea of the app which would combine personalized photos with a Butlins theme, it just needed building! Unfortunately quotes for the app were considerably larger than the budget.

Enter the Creative Services Exchange. Briefing the Exchange meant that Butlins could specify the budget they had and exactly what they wanted doing for it. Knowing that with nearly 12,000 creatives and agencies available to pitch, the combination of working for a well-known brand and the coolness of the project would mean that they would get positive responses.

This is how the Creative Services Exchange always works.  It’s the perfect choice for marketing directors in a classic conundrum  -  not being able to develop something in-house, but not having the infinite budget to bring in external resources. You want to buy creative, creatives want to sell. It’s a straightforward transaction and the Exchange facilitates that transaction, removing the overheads and shortening the process involved in traditional sourcing of creative through agency beauty parades. Briefing the requirement drives different responses: because the creatives on the Exchange are professional, experienced and approved they know how to pitch and what’s right for the brief, so the marketing director gets the best results. The transparency works for everyone: no late minute budget adjustments – everyone is working on the same, level, Exchange field.

As Jae Hopkins, Head of Communications, Butlins says, “blur Group’s Exchange is like the eBay of Marketing. I could find exactly the creative I needed, for the price that I’d set up front. We had a great choice and were thrilled with the results – at half the price of other alternatives.”

To get to this, the brief managers at blur Group shortlisted four amazing, high-quality pitches. This shortlist came from agencies and independents in the UK and the US, all of them experienced and proven in app development and all willing to deliver to the budget and timelines. It was a hard choice, but Butlins selected Grain Creative, a London-based agency, to build a creative and unique app. As well as fulfilling the development requirements, Grain perfectly captured the Butlins brand in their concepts.  See for yourself – released on 17 August 2011, the ‘Postcards!’ app sends an image and personalised message to up to 10 people and is available on iPhone, iPad, Android and Facebook.

Butlins is just one of the many brands that have had this sort of experience using the Creative Services Exchange. Everyone wants to be able to take advantage of the latest marketing techniques for their campaigns: not everyone has the budget or resources to do so. It’s why we know that for many brands, there is no alternative to briefing the Exchange.