Our relationship with Bonhams is going from strength to strength following the success of two highly effective online marketing campaigns designed to encourage participation in their Urban Art Sales.

We were approached by Bonhams – the largest auctioneer of fine art and antiques still in British ownership - at the beginning of 2008 to help them take their first steps in online marketing.

Bonhams were looking for a digital agency to drive traffic to their online sale catalogue and encourage participation in their first-ever Urban Art Sale, which took place in February 2008 and featured work by world-famous urban artists, Banksy.

Our online marketing team created an intensive sponsored search campaign for Bonhams which not only maximised reach and converted international interest into greater success at the auction, but also shattered all estimates.

Over the 23 days, the campaign attracted over 2,000 visitors - 1,600 of which had never visited the Bonhams website before. The top selling lot, Banksy’s Laugh Now, fetched almost £230,000, while the sale of his portraits of Kate Moss more than tripled the estimate to reach a total of £96,000.

The campaign was a challenge for us because it was not based on a typical e-commerce model. However, despite the challenges, our online marketing team worked closely with Bonhams to implement an aggressive pay-per-click campaign to drive traffic and encourage further interaction with the Sale, both online and off. The results show that 90% of visitors hadn’t been to the site before, with many of those people requesting more information, picking up the phone, and taking action on the site.

Karen AshtianiAccount Manager, TH_NK

Since then, we have conducted over 30 campaigns on Bonhams’ behalf, including an online marketing campaign for their second Urban Art Sale which took place on 23rd October 2008.

This campaign was equally successful, attracting 3,528 visitors - 84% of which were new to the site. The top five performing artists for this Sale were Banksy, Fairey, Keith Harring, Nick Walker and Kurt Jackson.

We were delighted with the results of the Urban Art campaigns that TH_NK created and managed for us. Online marketing campaigns for Bonhams present a particular challenge as we auction a wide spectrum of goods in physical salerooms around the world. The demographics and interest areas of sellers and buyers vary a great deal, which is why there is no such thing as a 'one size fits all' approach to running paid campaigns for Bonhams. So whilst the Urban Art Sales may have been seen to be particularly 'relevant' to the online community, TH_NK has helped us achieve great things with our online campaigns related to property of a far more conservative nature.

Henry BoydenInterim Head of Online Business and Marketing, Bonhams