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"It's a packed piece of land," says Dan Douglass, managing director of FCBi DP&A. "It has challenging landscapes and beautiful beaches, with lots of space and more castles per square mile than anywhere else. Along with the history and legends, it has contemporary appeal too, with the Millennium stadium and the waterfront in Cardiff."

This may be so, but when more sunnier locations have a far greater presence in the press, it can be tough for a less exotic and far smaller destination, both in terms of size and marketing budget, to get the attention it deserves.

Last year, Wales wanted more - and most especially it wanted a bigger slice of the lucrative international market.

Targeting by country

International visitors are great for Wales for three reasons: they spend more, they travel out of season and they're more likely to want to get off the beaten track. But some countries are worth targeting more than others, and for Wales, the US, The Netherlands and Germany have the most potential to generate visitors.

For several years, the Wales Tourist Board (WTB) had been working closely with VisitBritain, which is responsible for promoting the whole of Britain.

A few years ago, however, WTB received additional funding from the European Union, which meant it could supplement this work with its own.

In 2003, the international marketing team devised a plan targeting those countries most likely to generate visitors. WTB had already done some work on the US and, working with agency FCBi DP&A, it decided to target The Netherlands and Germany together.

"We'd done a lot of work in segmenting this market, including looking at demographics, particularly the lifestyle indicators of those with the potential to travel to Wales," explains Geraint Thomas, WTB international consumer marketing manager.

Happily for Thomas, this meant he already knew who the target audience within these countries was. "We categorise our visitors as independent explorers - they're willing and interested in travelling beyond the honeypot destinations of Britain such as London and the Cotswolds. They're mainly previous visitors to the UK, confident with travelling and using the English language, and travelling as a couple. They're interested in the landscape and using it for cycling, walking etc, and the myths and legends.

"In the first year, we wanted to build awareness of Wales, to plant seeds in people's minds to show them what Wales has to offer. We also wanted to convert this interest into visits."

But getting people to regard Wales as a holiday destination had proved something of a sticking point in the past. "Previously, we'd asked people what their perceptions of Wales were while they were here, and discovered that they couldn't see the link between the nice landscape and having enough to do on holiday there," says Thomas. "We wanted to address that issue but to get the message across needed more space than a DPS ad."

So, how to do it? The first step in the first quarter of last year was to build up a database of prospects, using people who had expressed their interest in visiting Wales by requesting a brochure.

To get handraisers, WTB placed press inserts, but only into titles it knew would do well for it, including K&C Kampioen, Reizen and Seasons in The Netherlands and Abenteuer & Reisen, Fit for Fun and Focus in Germany.

At the same time, it contacted previous enquirers from the VisitBritain database, those who had ticked boxes in brochures requesting information on Wales. WTB targeted 93,904 people in Germany and 56,661 in the Netherlands.

Location-specific campaign

Perhaps the most exciting part of the campaign was the ambient activity.

"We asked ourselves where else we could find these people," says Thomas. "We came up with ferry ports - if they're already travelling here, clearly they have an interest in Britain."

Choosing the Stena Line ferry terminal in Hoek van Holland (one of the key routes into the UK from the Netherlands), the team launched an ambient campaign designed to catch the traveller's attention wherever they were.

"We tried to own as much of that journey as possible. We had ticket folders made so when people made ferry bookings, their tickets came in a Wales-branded wallet. We had outdoor posters done, and at Hoek van Holland we stuck a giant wall poster 29m long on the side of the ferry port."

Then, on one July weekend in 2003 - the one WTB's research had shown would be the busiest with holiday-makers from Holland and Germany - it launched a full-scale assault at the terminal. "We gave out car sunscreens and pillows to ease people's journeys," says Thomas. "On the ferry, we had a video running, ads in the onboard magazine and on till receipts. We also made sure WTB information was available."

The response from this activity beat all targets, almost doubling from the hoped for 70,000 to 108,000.

In 2004, the emphasis was on trying to convert interest into visits to Wales. "There's a habit of looking at each annual campaign as a separate entity," says Thomas. "We've been guilty of this, so this year we're trying to build on what we did in 2003."

And WTB also has other targets to meet - generating a six per cent increase in spend from international visitors each year and a 12:1 ROI.

The emphasis in 2004 has been on BTL. "We've gone back to everyone who enquired in 2003 and also topped up our contacts from VisitBritain," says Thomas. "We also did a bit of list purchasing with Claritas in the Netherlands and Germany."

These prospects were sent a postcard designed to take them on a visual journey. It acknowledged that they had shown a previous interest in Wales, and reminded them of its offerings, with the aim of encouraging them to request further information or to visit.

And, instead of repeating last year's ambient activity, this year WTB has developed its online activity. "We're trying to do the same thing in a virtual way, such as trying to select media that gives us the same opportunities, for example, route finder sites," says Thomas. "So on one particular German site, there's a Wales ad on the pages that link to British routes." So far this has had about 30,000 responses and is ongoing.

New enquirers receive similar material to what went out last year, but for those whom WTB communicated with last year, or who have already responded to this year's activity, there is a 'flicky' mailer that flicks out to show more information on Wales. "This was about getting people to engage with the variety in Wales - the beaches, castles, countryside etc," says Douglass. "They pulled a tab and it flicked out to reveal the words 'find a new path'. It was a nice, involving piece."

Segmentation strategy

The 18 months of activity has encouraged WTB to look more closely at segments. But it is still early days, according to Thomas: "We're mindful that if we segment in great detail now, we'd get into relatively small numbers and this would make it costly to target them. As the database grows, we'll make more detailed segmentation.

It has been quite a learning curve. While the plan is to continue building up the database, the activity has also shown WTB just how well ambient activity can work alongside the more traditional means of direct mail and press ads.

And with results like these, there's no denying that the teams all fully deserve their own holiday this year.