The Campaign

Our audience was looking for something exciting, and actually useful. We wanted to avoid the world of clichéd travel content at all costs - of unrelatable experiences, stock photography, perfect people in perfect situations – and tap into something a little more authentic. Life’s too short to live on a Lonely Planet. By creating the world’s shortest city guides we appealed directly to an audience bored with homogenous hotels and their homogenous content. We captured 24 hours in Asia’s hottest cities in 24 seconds creating both entertaining videos but also rich content that provided genuine utility for the time poor modern traveller.

Creative Execution

We used Hotel Jen’s first anniversary as a celebration of the joys of travel and a statement of intent as to what the brand stands for. 6 days, 6 cities, armed with nothing more than a GoPro and an appetite for adventure, Jen captured the real, authentic and unexpected experiences she came across. We brought each city to life in 24 seconds. With each second of video representing one hour on the ground, our guides brought to life 24 hours of the most exciting, unusual and unknown possibilities each city had to offer. For the information overloaded, time-deprived and attention-challenged, the guides provide a fast paced and unusually real take of the one-of-a-kind activities that appeal to the short break traveller tired of the stock shot, off the shelf stories”.

With a moderate budget and limited brand awareness, the campaign succeeded in elevating Hotel Jen in the minds of consumers when booking short breaks in Asia. The campaign ran from November 2015 to February 2016, and during this period there was an uplift in both brand awareness, social engagement and bookings. Over the campaign period, there was a 20% increase in awareness of the brand. The 24 hours in 24 seconds videos received over half a million views. We doubled social engagement during the campaign period and saw a 40% increase in new followers across all social channels. As well as awareness, there was also a target to drive incremental bookings. During the period of the campaign, there was a 10% boost in bookings and 60% uplift in conversion rate, demonstrating that consumers had not only seen the content but responded positively to it.

The reality is the majority of travellers do not extraneously plan their trips. They are silent, spontaneous and self-directed. They seek out the unusual and unexpected. We needed to help people make the most of their trip and their even shorter attention spans. We targeted the young and the young at heart with newsworthy utility. To build awareness, rich media formats were employed to capture the attention of the audience. By allowing people to scroll through different attractions and moments in banner adverts, we could build excitement and encourage clickthrough to the brand website (without relying on heavy discounts). Each 24 second city guide was launched across Hotel Jen’s social pages, and boosted by paid social media spend. On Hotel Jen’s website, the video guides were broken down into 1 second gifs, supported by additional information and available to download in a travel-friendly pdf.