Higher click-through rate vs previous benchmark
Increase in daily conversions
Direct converting calls tracked
Venues now running this strategy
Client & context
Aqua Shard sits on Level 31 of The Shard — one of London’s most iconic dining destinations. Part of the global Aqua Restaurant Group, sunset dinners sell themselves. Lunch was a different story. The challenge was shifting high-value tourists from “special occasion dinner” to “must-do lunch stop.”
The challenge
- Competition for attention: tourists bombarded with dining options at London Bridge, requiring cut-through at the exact moment of planning.
- Dinner bias: most users search for “dinner with a view” — shifting intent toward lunch required a highly persuasive hook.
- Tracking blind spots: no robust data linking ad spend to actual covers booked.
Strategy & execution
A location and occasion strategy tailored to the tourist mindset — selling not just food, but the quintessential London moment, at the exact moment tourists were planning their day.
Launched location-first creative
A/B tested multiple messages — the clear winner framed lunch at Aqua Shard as an essential sightseeing stop, leading with iconic views over Tower Bridge and St. Paul’s.
Deployed smart retargeting
Captured interest from visitors researching The Shard and served high-intent ads to secure the booking before they looked elsewhere.
Built full conversion tracking
Worked directly with their developers to implement granular tracking — measuring converting calls and reservations, giving total visibility on ad spend.
Scaled across the group
Results were so immediate the strategy was rolled out to Hutong, Nueva, and Kyoto — three further venues within the Aqua Restaurant Group.
Results
- CTR more than doubled: location-first creative outperformed all previous benchmarks by 105%.
- Daily conversions doubled: filling critical lunch covers with high-value guests.
- Strategy adopted group-wide: rolled out to three additional Aqua Restaurant Group venues.
Key takeaways
- Intent can be shifted with the right framing: tourists already wanted a premium London experience, and the campaign succeeded by repositioning lunch as part of that experience rather than trying to invent new demand.
- Location becomes more powerful when it feels specific: naming Tower Bridge and St. Paul’s made the ads feel immediate and relevant, which helped cut through the noise around London Bridge.
- Measurement turns good creative into a scalable system: once bookings and calls were tracked properly, the restaurant could see which ads drove real covers and make decisions with confidence.
- Strong ideas replicate well: because the concept was simple and effective, it could be rolled out across other venues in the group without needing to rebuild the strategy from scratch.