Contiki: The Poster Beats the Movie

This is episode 26 of Making Moves, a weekly mini-podcast where Ne-Lo co-founders Ross Hastings and Kieran Antill pick a company making an interesting strategic move and interrogate it. Unscripted, unedited, under 15 minutes. The Contiki episode was recorded on 30 October 2026.

This week: Contiki.

A repositioning, not just a campaign

Contiki is billing this as its first major brand reset in a very long time. And on paper it is a full repositioning. Campaign, digital experience, product, pricing. The whole marketing mix, not just the ad.

That matters. We define repositioning as a company-wide set of decisions that moves the whole mix in the market for growth. Contiki is talking that language. The product has visibly changed. The buyer journey has been rebuilt as a proper e-commerce play. Pricing is in the conversation too.

Most of those decisions sit below the surface, so we can only judge what we can see. What is front and centre is a series of brand films Contiki calls micro-dramas. That is where the story gets complicated.

The idea is strong: travel as a story you choose

Strip the execution away and the insight is a good one. Travelling young is about adventure. You meet people who become characters in your trip. Things happen you could never plan for. Every trip is its own little story.

The website carries that idea well. Trips are presented like titles on a streaming platform. You browse epics. You pick a territory, a travel style, a group size, a price point. The interface is close enough to a streaming service to feel a little on the nose, but it works.

It works because it solves a hard problem in travel. Too much choice is paralysing. Too little feels like a package tour. Contiki has found a middle ground. Enough agency to feel like you are choosing your own adventure, without the tyranny of freedom.

It is a modern Lonely Planet. That generation used to browse a bookshelf, pick a region and plan the trip through the pages. Contiki has captured that feeling for a more digital, more social traveller.

The execution misses: polishing what shouldn't be polished

Then there are the films. Reportedly 18 months in the making. Professional cameras, professional angles, professional edit. And that is exactly the problem.

The more pre-production meetings you have, the more you are making an ad and the less you are making content. These films end up stuck in the middle. Not epic enough to be cinema. Too produced to feel like real people on a real adventure. It is the classic big-agency trap of trying to act like an influencer.

There is a contradiction baked in too. The films were shot in one location, Costa Rica. That is a rational production decision. But the beauty of the product is seven countries and three festivals in one trip. The films shrink the promise.

And they tell someone else's story. Nobody booking a Contiki trip wants your drama. They want their own.

Pricing: the quiet lever

Contiki has talked about lowering prices in a cost-of-living squeeze, and about weaning customers off the sale cycle. We are sceptical about the second part.

In travel, a sale is the nudge that turns intent into a booking. Even one six months away. Reset prices lower and your future sales have less headroom. You may have created a new problem trying to escape an old one.

The more interesting opportunity is already in the product. Group size, trip length, number of countries. These are value levers. Choose a bigger group and the price drops. Choose a longer trip and the value per day rises. If Contiki frames those levers properly, choose-your-own-adventure becomes choose-your-own-price. That is value-based pricing without the discount.

Our advice: control through curation

The platform Contiki has built is perfect for other people to execute on. So let them.

Hand the cameras to the travellers. Let them make a lot of content, most of it rough. Then curate the best and promote it. That means giving up some control, which is hard for most organisations. But it is the only way to show the raw stories Contiki is actually delivering.

Sell the movie poster. Let your customers make the movie.

Making Moves is a weekly mini-podcast from Ne-Lo, Australia's repositioning consultancy. New episodes every Friday.