A brand-new festive light trail at Hazlewood Castle with no audience, no photos of the finished event and one launch to get right. We ran a registration-first campaign on Meta, testing eight ads and sixteen versions of the landing page until the winning combination held. The full stack was AI-assisted: castle stills reimagined in December, ad overlays, video, a theme song and a Santa phone line. Six WhatsApp communities got the on-sale thirty minutes early and sold 11,000 tickets before the public link went live.
One launch. Everything counted.
A first-year event with no photos of the finished trail and one on-sale to get right. These are the campaign totals from registration open to the end of day one.
Same campaign. Different pictures.
Eight ads ran against one priority-registration objective. Meta found the winners fast: branded video took the volume, the funfair still took the cost. The rest we let go.
- Spend
- £10,555
- Regs
- 12,444
- CPR
- £0.85
02- Spend
- £4,944
- Regs
- 5,545
- CPR
- £0.89
03- Spend
- £2,769
- Regs
- 3,729
- CPR
- £0.74
04- Spend
- £1,506
- Regs
- 3,111
- CPR
- £0.48
05- Spend
- £208
- Regs
- 358
- CPR
- £0.58
06- Spend
- £20
- Regs
- 43
- CPR
- £0.47
- Spend
- £2.83
- Regs
- 7
- CPR
- £0.40
08- Spend
- £0.92
- Regs
- 1
- CPR
- £0.92
Treat the page like a creative.
The landing page had the same job as the ads, so it got the same treatment: sixteen versions built and deployed from Cursor, tested until one combination held.
How we actually did this.
Every piece of the campaign was produced or shipped through an AI tool, with the team directing. Nothing here is a demo. It all went live.
Cursor Site and 16 variants
Grok The build in Cursor
GPT Image Stills of the castle
Claude Design overlays
Seedance AI video
Suno The song
ElevenLabs Santa voice
Twilio The phone call
Meta Ads MCP
Klaviyo Email via Cursor
WHAPI Six communities
E Labs Directing all of it
Same castle. The December version.
The venue had summer photos and nothing else. Left is the real castle. Right is the same angle, reimagined for December, generated from the original.
Stills are not ads yet.
Date, venue, call to action. The picture came from GPT Image; the type and layout came from Claude Design, so every ad in the test shared one system.
Stills into motion. Then the book video.
The December stills became the branded video that led the campaign, then a longer cut, then the storybook film with a voiceover.
The song on that video.
An original Christmas Kingdom theme written in Suno, used across the video ads and the on-sale content. Press play.
A call to Santa.
Over 250 people phoned Santa. An ElevenLabs voice agent answered on a Twilio number, running on Qwen 3.6 for low latency, and told them where he would be this Christmas. The line is still live.
+44 7367 100853
The ads shipped from Cursor.
Campaigns, ad sets and the eight creatives were built and launched through the Meta Ads MCP, so a change to the creative and a change to the ad were the same conversation.
| Campaign | Results | Reach | Freq | CPR | Spend | Impr. | CPM | Clicks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Event Response Warm · UK | 746 Event responses | 9,661 | 4.22 | £0.23 Event response | £171.82 | 40,761 | £4.22 | 903 |
| Win Tickets Reel Post engagement · Warm · UK | 10,579 Post engagements | 17,982 | 1.19 | £0.01 Post engagement | £98.70 | 21,413 | £4.61 | - |
| Retargeting Warm · UK | 481 Complete registrations | 20,238 | 1.98 | £0.31 Registration | £148.05 | 39,977 | £3.70 | 797 |
| Priority Registration Jul 2026 | 26,832 Complete registrations | 915,492 | 4.86 | £0.81 Registration | £21,702.71 | 4,447,870 | £4.88 | 75,371 |
| 4 campaigns Totals | - | 908,493 Meta accounts | 5.01 Per account | - | £22,121.28 Total spent | 4,550,021 Total | £4.86 Per 1k impr. | 77,071 Total |
| Ad | Results | Reach | Freq | CPR | Spend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Video Branded V2 CK-COLD-09 | 1,532 | 170,664 | 1.93 | £1.11 | £1,696.49 |
| Funfair CK-COLD-03 | 3,111 | 133,421 | 3.12 | £0.48 | £1,506.44 |
| Master CK-COLD-06 | 43 | 5,129 | 1.08 | £0.47 | £20.13 |
| Video CK-COLD-08 | 7 | 623 | 1.10 | £0.40 | £2.83 |
| Beginning CK-COLD-05 | 1 | 123 | 1.05 | £0.92 | £0.92 |
| Winter CK-COLD-04 | 5,545 | 488,629 | 2.31 | £0.89 | £4,944.12 |
| Courtyard CK-COLD-01 | 3,729 | 249,139 | 2.16 | £0.74 | £2,769.09 |
| Aerial CK-COLD-02 | 358 | 32,174 | 1.24 | £0.58 | £208.10 |
| Video Branded CK-COLD-07 | 12,444 | 667,786 | 2.98 | £0.85 | £10,554.59 |
| 9 ads Totals | 26,770 | 907,961 Meta accounts | 4.90 Per account | £0.81 | £21,702.71 Total spent |
Templates, flows, campaigns.
Registration confirmation from Klaviyo, then three timed WhatsApp messages on the day: tickets live, access times and dates, slots and pricing.
Six WhatsApp communities. 11.5k people.
The communities got the link thirty minutes before the public. Over 11,000 tickets sold in that window, before anyone else could buy.
One prompt. PDF to realistic video.
The trail did not exist yet. Mandylights had a concept deck, so we pulled the stills out of it, upscaled them and walked a camera through. The walk-through is Gemini Omni Flash 1.1.
Pull the concept stills from this deck. Upscale them with GPT Image 2. Then Gemini Omni Flash 1.1: a real walk through the light trail.
Freed time is the product.
- 01 More time freed
- 02 More creativity
- 03 More output
- 04 More tests, then more winning combinations
Features and deliverables.
Registration-first paid media
Eight ads ran against one priority-registration objective on £22.1k of spend: 4.5M impressions, 908k reach, £0.76 average cost per registration. Branded video led at 12,444 sign-ups; the funfair still came in at £0.48.
Sixteen landing page variants
The page was treated like a creative and iterated until one combination converted. 51k unique visitors, built and deployed from Cursor.
AI creative pipeline
Summer photos of the castle became December stills, then ads with Claude Design, then motion with Seedance. Suno wrote the song; ElevenLabs voiced Santa for 250+ phone calls.
Six WhatsApp communities
11,500 people joined ahead of launch and received the link thirty minutes early. Over 11,000 tickets sold in that window at 4.2 tickets per order.
Klaviyo email and on-sale comms
Registration confirmations, on-sale briefings and three timed WhatsApp broadcasts carried the audience from sign-up to checkout.
From the promoter.
I've been a promoter and worked in marketing for 23 years, so I thought I knew pretty much all there was to know. Working with Elliot Matthews and E Labs on the Christmas Kingdom campaign very quickly humbled me - and has been one of the most mind-blowingly insightful experiences I've had in marketing.
The speed at which Elliot understood the project, built the strategy and put it into action was exceptional. What would normally take weeks seemed to happen in days, without ever compromising on the thinking or detail.
More importantly, the results have been incredible. From the initial ticket registration campaign right through to the on-sale, performance exceeded our expectations and changed my perception of what was possible.
Elliot's knowledge of AI and its practical application within marketing is on another level. He understands how to use it to strategise, optimise, solve problems and, most importantly, drive real commercial results.
He's a genuine problem solver - fast, commercially minded, incredibly knowledgeable and always thinking several steps ahead.
It's rare to work with someone who genuinely changes the way you think about your own field. Elliot has done exactly that for me, and I couldn't recommend him and E Labs highly enough.
Big up!
