The Campaign

In every nook and cranny of this 1,104 km2 piece of land are hidden treasures, untold stories and experiences that only a handful of people know about. The ‘I Never Knew’ campaign crowd-sourced these gems, switching from promoting Hong Kong to sharing actual experiences from real people. We wanted to inspire Hong Kongers, and the millions of visitors, to share what millions more in and outside of Hong Kong never knew about the city – the food, underground bars, local designers and many more, all through mobile and social. Unscripted, unplanned and undeterred by the weather, everyone was encouraged to express and share what they never knew about Hong Kong on the social media platform of their choice. Rather than being told by an official tourist board, locals and visitors’ stories would be used to change preconceived ideas about what potential visitors thought they knew about Hong Kong.

Creative Execution

‘I Never Knew’ was a four-week campaign designed for both mobile and desktop. Kicking it off with YouTube sensations: Fung Bros, Evan Tube and Rima Zeidan, inspiring videos of them discovering Hong Kong were used to create massive buzz. Then we tapped into previous Hong Kong visitors and locals who all had their own passionate tales to tell. Every story began with ‘I Never Knew’, and there was no end to what they had to share. All the videos, photos and itineraries were hosted on the campaign site and pushed through the campaign hashtag #discoverhongkong. The site was a real-time source for future visitors to come back to for ideas to spice up their own journeys when visiting Hong Kong. Enticing weekly and daily incentives such as free flights, hotel accommodation, Michelin-starred experiences and vouchers, encouraged our audience to visit Hong Kong again to discover more about the city.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

‘I Never Knew’ was the first UGC campaign from HKTB, designed for both mobile and desktop. And during the four week campaign period, we exceeded all business targets: - Influencer videos hit over 5 million views - Campaign site had over 4.2 million visitors - Over 10,000 UGC stories (video and photo submissions) were received; that’s one submission every 5 minutes

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

The Hong Kong Tourism Board ‘I Never Knew’ campaign was a social-first, UGC campaign, that put the power in the hands of the public. For the first time, Hong Kong Tourism decided to surrender the brand to its audience. They had no choice because travellers trust other travellers. Content generated by the target audience itself is seen as more credible, experiential and more shareable. The content also needed to feel alive, accessible in real time just as the city that it was promoting – Hong Kong, the city that never sleeps.

Our target audience were short haul visitors (not including those from Mainland China). Since they are highly active on social media, we partnered with a powerful social aggregation platform that specializes in activation across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to make the experience seamless and to obtain maximum reach on this campaign. We also designed the platforms to cater to audiences who use YouTube and Vimeo. We also made it very easy and straightforward for our audience to make submissions by simply including the campaign hashtag. This aggregation meant the stories were pushed live to our campaign website in real time.