By Avinash Janjire With Harsh Desai
In a candid phone conversation, Avinash Janjire, Head of Marketing at Thomas Cook India, detailed how the company has managed to stay relevant across its 144 year old journey by placing authentic customer conversations at the heart of every decision. Rather than choosing between building brand equity or driving immediate bookings, the team learned to weave both objectives into a unified strategy, powered by clear metrics, nimble martech partnerships, and a year-round dialogue with travelers. In fact, their recent campaign with Kartik Arryan, looks unlike anything that you’d expect from Thomas Cook
Marketing veteran Avinash Janjire became convinced early on that brand-building and demand-generation are two sides of the same coin. He argues that a strong brand halo makes performance campaigns far more effective, and precise demand-activation campaigns allow brands to fully capitalize on the interest that well-crafted storytelling generates. At Thomas Cook, this meant planning integrated campaigns in which hero films and aspirational content create awareness, and are immediately followed by targeted offers that nudge the same audience towards booking.
Building a High-Performance, Agile Engine
Central to every initiative was an unwavering focus on a handful of acquisition metrics that transcend industry boundaries. From insurance to travel, Cost per Lead, Cost per Acquisition, Conversion Rates, and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) proved the most reliable indicators of success. Avinash insists that empathy and creative flair must always tie back to these business-critical KPIs, ensuring that each creative concept directly contributes to lowering acquisition costs and boosting profitability .
Yet, even the most compelling campaigns stall if legacy technology slows integration and real-time responsiveness. Thomas Cook’s marketing team sidestepped this pitfall by partnering with best-in-class martech startups, leveraging mobile-first automation, AI-driven programmatic platforms, and personalization engines via plug-and-play APIs. Rather than attempting to build every capability in-house, Avinash’s team stood up always-on, scalable campaigns in weeks instead of quarters, maintaining agility in an increasingly digital landscape.
Performance with Room to Experiment
Measuring the health of this new marketing engine meant moving beyond vanity metrics like impressions or click-through rates. The true test lay in sustaining a Cost of Acquisition (CoA) well below profit margins, even as campaign volume scaled across digital and retail touchpoints. As long as those thresholds held, the team knew their strategy was delivering real business impact .
To keep the organization focused on outcomes without stifling innovation, Thomas Cook adopted a two-tiered approach: a core dashboard of essential KPIs (CPL, CoA, ROAS, organic-to-lead ratio) that guide day-to-day operations, alongside a small “innovation fund” dedicated to rapid, experimental tests. This balance between disciplined performance management and fast-fail experimentation has unearthed new tactics that feed back into mainstream campaigns.
Travel Marketing as a Lifecycle Conversation
Perhaps most crucially, Avinash reframed travel marketing as a continuous conversation rather than a series of discrete campaigns. Recognizing that most customers book only one holiday per year, his team crafted a lifecycle strategy that engages travelers at every milestone, from personalized destination guides and timely festival-related offers to post-trip surveys that transform experiences into social proof and testimonials. This sustained engagement keeps Thomas Cook top-of-mind throughout long purchase cycles and drives repeat bookings .
Avinash Janjire’s playbook demonstrates that legacy brands need not sacrifice their heritage to compete in a digital-first era. By embedding customer conversations at every stage, from unified brand and performance tactics to agile martech partnerships and lifecycle marketing, Thomas Cook India has forged a marketing model that delivers both immediate ROI and enduring brand loyalty. For marketers seeking to revitalize established brands, the lesson is clear: listen deeply, measure rigorously, and innovate boldly.
