First Choice partnered with CALM and Ogilvy PR to launch Better Boys Trips in the UK, redefining all-male travel with alternative itineraries and mental health
First Choice Rewrites the Lads Holiday With Better Boys Trips
Better Boys Trips is a 2025 integrated campaign by First Choice and Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM), created by Ogilvy PR, that offers alternative all-boys holiday itineraries designed to challenge the pressures of stereotypical lads holiday culture across the United Kingdom.
First Choice launched the campaign on 2 May 2025, according to reporting by The Drum, positioning it as an earned-first integrated effort built around a genuine social tension rather than a promotional mechanic. The campaign introduces the phrase "Manflew Epidemic" — a newly coined term that names the anxiety men experience when all-boys holidays demand conformity to a narrow, party-heavy template. The strategic pivot represents a meaningful departure from First Choice's previous creative platform, "Ridiculously Good Value," which was developed by VMLY&R with media handled by MediaCom and launched on 26 December 2021, according to Marketing Beat, and focused on low-cost repositioning through surreal visual imagery.
In the United Kingdom, the campaign operates across two interconnected streams. The first is a curated series of Better Boys Trips itineraries — alternative holiday programmes in traditional party destinations, built to encourage authentic connection over performative excess. The second is an influencer partnership with YouTube creator George Clarke, whose content for the campaign placed the Better Boys Trips concept inside a real travel experience. First Choice also partnered with independent fashion label Everpress to produce a limited-edition reimagining of the classic holiday novelty shirt, with all proceeds directed to CALM, the UK's leading suicide prevention charity. The campaign earned a Clapboard Score of 83 out of 100, reflecting strong creative coherence and measurable cultural impact.
First Choice's own research underpins the entire strategic rationale for Better Boys Trips. According to First Choice, 81% of men aged 18 to 35 in the United Kingdom feel pressured to act more macho on all-boys holidays, and 66% struggle to keep up with the expectations of excessive partying. These figures, drawn from the brand's proprietary consumer research, gave Ogilvy PR a clear insight platform: the lads holiday, as a cultural construct, is generating genuine psychological discomfort among the very men it is supposed to celebrate.
The travel and tourism sector in the United Kingdom operates within a highly competitive landscape. TUI Group — First Choice's parent company, as noted by TUI's own corporate disclosures — competes directly with large-scale operators including Jet2holidays and easyJet Holidays for the UK package travel market. Both rivals have invested heavily in value-led positioning and aspirational summer campaign activity. By anchoring Better Boys Trips to a mental health partnership with CALM rather than a price promise or destination fantasy, First Choice claimed differentiated territory that neither competitor was occupying in 2025.
The global leisure travel market was growing at approximately 6% annually in 2025, according to Market Data Forecast, with Europe accounting for a significant share of that activity. In the United Kingdom specifically, the cultural conversation around male mental health had intensified through mainstream media and policy discussion, creating receptive conditions for a campaign that addressed the emotional cost of social pressure among young men. CALM's presence as a co-brand gave First Choice immediate credibility within that conversation, connecting a commercial travel offering to a cause with genuine public trust and recognition across the UK market.
Ed Morris directed the campaign content for Better Boys Trips, with production handled by Riff Raff Films, according to campaign credits documented by LBB Online. The creative approach centres on experiential authenticity — placing real people in real destinations to demonstrate that a different kind of lads holiday is not only possible but genuinely enjoyable.
The anchor content piece, produced in partnership with YouTube creator George Clarke, carries the title "We Went to the World's DRUNKEST City for a Wholesome Weekend." The framing is deliberate: Prague, a city synonymous in the UK popular imagination with stag weekends and heavy drinking, becomes the proving ground for the Better Boys Trips proposition. Clarke and his friends follow a First Choice itinerary designed to foreground culture, connection, and experience over alcohol consumption. The tonal tension between the title's provocation and the content's warmth is precisely calibrated to travel on social platforms.
The Everpress fashion collaboration adds a tangible retail dimension to the campaign. The limited-edition holiday shirts — a reworking of the novelty garment that has long served as a shorthand for lads holiday excess — function simultaneously as a fundraising mechanism for CALM and as a physical artefact of the campaign's values. All proceeds from sales go directly to CALM, ensuring the commercial partnership retains integrity. Kevin Nelson, Managing Director at First Choice, articulated the brand's position clearly, stating according to LBB Online: "No one should feel pressured into being someone they're not on holiday, or living up to outdated norms at the expense of their mental health. A lads' trip should be about fun, friendship, bonding, and making memories." Coverage of the campaign appeared as dedicated features in LADbible, Dazed, and Paused, reaching audiences directly aligned with the 18-to-35 male demographic at the campaign's core, according to Ogilvy's own reported outcomes.
Better Boys Trips delivered measurable results across earned media, platform performance, and industry recognition. George Clarke's YouTube content generated 1,384,810 views, 44,394 likes, and 904 comments, according to Ogilvy's documented campaign outcomes, and trended at number six on YouTube on launch day with 1.1 million views recorded, as reported by The Drum. The campaign secured over 80 pieces of media coverage and drove 8,700 visits to the dedicated campaign page, according to Ogilvy. A 15% increase in searches for Prague was recorded during the campaign period, per Ogilvy's reported figures, suggesting the itinerary content generated genuine travel intent rather than passive awareness.
Industry recognition confirmed the campaign's standing within the UK integrated marketing landscape. Better Boys Trips won Gold in PR Travel and Tourism and Silver in PR Integrated at The Drum Awards 2025, according to The Drum. The campaign also won Gold in Social Media Campaign of the Year at the PRmoment Awards 2026, as documented by PRmoment, and appeared in the PRWeek Awards 2025 published winners material, according to PRWeek.
Structurally, the campaign demonstrates the commercial effectiveness of cause-aligned positioning when the cause is directly relevant to the consumer tension the brand is addressing. The CALM partnership is not decorative — it provides the campaign's moral architecture and lends credibility to First Choice's claim that a lads holiday can be something other than what convention has dictated. The Clapboard Score of 83 out of 100 reflects that coherence: strong earned media performance, clear creative idea, purposeful brand-cause alignment, and verifiable cultural impact in the United Kingdom.
Better Boys Trips is a 2025 integrated campaign by First Choice and CALM, created by Ogilvy PR in the United Kingdom. It offers alternative all-boys holiday itineraries designed to challenge the social pressures of traditional lads holidays. The campaign launched on 2 May 2025 and includes influencer content, curated travel itineraries, and a fashion collaboration with Everpress.
First Choice partnered with CALM because its own research found that 81% of men aged 18 to 35 in the UK feel pressured to act more macho on all-boys holidays. CALM, the UK's leading suicide prevention charity, provided credibility and purpose to a campaign addressing male mental health pressures within travel culture.
Better Boys Trips won Gold in PR Travel and Tourism and Silver in PR Integrated at The Drum Awards 2025, according to The Drum. The campaign also won Gold in Social Media Campaign of the Year at the PRmoment Awards 2026 and appeared in PRWeek Awards 2025 winners material, according to those respective publications.
George Clarke's YouTube content for Better Boys Trips generated 1,384,810 views, 44,394 likes, and 904 comments, according to Ogilvy. The video trended at number six on YouTube on launch day, reaching 1.1 million views, as reported by The Drum, making it one of the campaign's most significant earned-media drivers.
First Choice partnered with independent fashion label Everpress to produce a limited-edition reimagining of the classic lads holiday novelty shirt. The garments were sold as part of the Better Boys Trips campaign, with all proceeds directed to CALM. The collaboration gave the campaign a physical retail dimension aligned with its mental health purpose.
Ed Morris directed the Better Boys Trips campaign content, with production handled by Riff Raff Films, according to credits documented by LBB Online. The campaign was created by Ogilvy PR for First Choice and CALM and launched in the United Kingdom in May 2025 as an earned-first integrated marketing effort.
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