Lastminute division to help brands in-house marketing

Lastminute.com is tapping into the in-housing trend by launching a consultancy to help brands handle their marketing activity internally after setting up its own media and data operation.
Dubbed Playbook, the consultancy is designed to guide businesses through the process of in-housing their core marketing assets and capabilities – from media buying and selling to technology, and data to content creation.
Playbook will be led by the team that built Travel People – Lastminute’s in-house media and trading business, which it claims increased the company’s annual media revenues by 40% in just three years.
It will harness the team’s experience of in-housing marketing and media technology, core areas of media trading, content production and creative automation.
Playbook and Travel People will both be part of a new independent media company within Lastminute, called Forward (FWD), headed up by chief executive Alessandra Di Lorenzo.
The Playbook team is already working with both travel and FMCG clients supporting initiatives that span from in-housing of marketing technology to content production and automation.
Di Lorenzo said: “Having in-housed media for Lastminute across Europe, we’ve experienced the challenges, solved the problems, spotted the opportunities and honed the process. We realised that we are perfectly placed to de-risk the process for other businesses, and to help move other brands forward by making their marketing activity more efficient, intelligent and relevant.”
“2019 and beyond looks set to be a tough year for marketers. In-housing proven and repeatable marketing activities is a no-brainer for companies wanting to empower their teams to drive powerful and tangible achievements, faster. But – understandably – many don’t know where to start. That’s where Playbook comes in.”
Lastminute first moved into the data insight business in 2017 with Travel Insights, which taps into first-party data as well as partnerships with key third-party data providers, to give brands what it claims is a a deeper understanding of their customers.