30 Under 30: Meet Aaron Evans-Aghoghogbe

Being one step ahead of the crowd gets you far in business, as co-founder and director of Together Travel Aaron Evans-Aghoghogbe has proved.

After dropping out of design school, his luck changed when he joined marketing agency 1000heads in 2009 – which saw huge value in harnessing the power of digital media.

“I joined when social media was just starting to be used as a brand tool,” he says. “Our agency’s job was to get people to jump on it and start realising its importance.”

As a marketer, he worked with brands including Adidas, American Express and STA Travel, with a focus on using social traffic to boost visibility.

The birth of Together Travel was sparked from a trip he made to Ibiza in 2010 to get away from work. A year later, he met co-founders Charlie McMullen and Christopher Moon, who were working in London and had also planned a trip to Ibiza with friends. The trio recognised a need for a simpler way to make such bookings and a chance to monetise the idea. “I started to work with them to organise the trips on a bigger scale,” Evans-Aghoghogbe says.

Targeting millennials, Together Travel fuses traditional travel – offering flights and hotels – with organising dynamic, music-focused experiences such as nightclub entry and parties, which they consider a key selling point.

The entrepreneur used his social media skills to help build the firm quickly. “We used the power of Facebook to find customers very cheaply. This was before brands were engaging on it and before Facebook advertising had really taken off.”

Evans-Aghoghogbe continued to work in marketing while planning trips for Together Travel part time. In 2012, at the age of 25, he moved to Australia to work with advertising agencies and do freelance marketing work.

“I wasn’t an avid traveller before Australia, but when I was living out there I realised how much I enjoyed the world of travel,” he says.

Motivated to move into travel full time, Evans-Aghoghogbe left agency life to join Contiki’s digital marketing team in Australia. “It was really useful in increasing my knowledge of the industry,” he explains.

By the end of 2013, he had left Contiki and was working at Together Travel full time.