US
In the land of Hollywood and television, we reinforced Hong Kong’s presence through a big-budget action film and reality shows. We also worked with an online influencer network and one of the best-known online travel agencies to promote the Hong Kong destination brand to the digitally savvy.
Impactful spin-off from the movie Skyscraper
- Publicity value generated by the Skyscraper integrated marketing campaign: HK$5 million
Vertiginous skyscrapers are the icons of Hong Kong. So it came as no surprise that the film Skyscraper had chosen Hong Kong as the backdrop. Starring “The Rock” Dwayne Johnson, the film tells the story of a security expert trying to save his family inside a fictional 255-storey building located in Hong Kong, the city of looming skyscrapers.
Our US office worked with the film’s distributor Universal Pictures and rolled out an integrated marketing campaign upon the release of the motion picture to heighten awareness of Hong Kong. The centre piece was a sweepstake providing a free trip to Hong Kong for two, and a micro-site was created to link to the movie trailer while driving traffic to our official website DiscoverHongKong.com. Paid digital and both paid and organic social media contents were impactfully used to boost entries. The campaign was recognised with a Silver Award in the HSMAI (Hospitality, Sales & Marketing Association International) Adrian Awards 2018, under the “Digital Marketing – Digital Campaign – Contest/ Sweepstakes” category.
Publicity of the film and Hong Kong climbed further up when “The Rock” and key US media titles visited the city in July 2018 as part of a promotion tour, which resulted in extensive TV and online coverage.
Inviting travel influencers to promote Hong Kong neighbourhoods
- Reach of the influencers’ social media campaign: over 100 million impressions
- Publicity value generated by “EXTRA’s “Mansions and Millionaires”: over HK$11 million
Influencer marketing is an inevitable trend, but choosing the right “spokesperson” requires skills on the part of the marketer.
Instead of randomly approaching individual influencers, our US team worked systematically with iAmbassador, an organised network of travel influencers from around the world. Four influencers from the extensive network were handpicked to develop blog contents on our Sham Shui Po neighbourhood promotion which was featured by the network.
We also worked with “traditional” influencers to reach other demographics. One of them was Michael Corbett, actor, producer, entertainment journalist and host of EXTRA’s “Mansions and Millionaires”, of which we brought one episode to Hong Kong in partnership with TV network NBC to introduce the city’s natural scenery and interesting neighbourhoods. The promotion did not end with the airing of the programme, as Corbett went on to share his experience in Hong Kong during a national satellite media tour, holding both live and taped interviews with TV stations across the US.
Another personality we engaged was travel expert Samantha Brown, whose “Places to Love” show on PBS dedicated a 30-minute episode to introducing Hong Kong’s dining, architecture, local culture, nightlife and history.
Driving Hong Kong bookings with Expedia
- Results of the three integrated Expedia campaigns: over 16,000 air tickets sold and more than 35,000 rooms booked
In the US market where the use of online travel agencies (OTAs) is a norm, we teamed up with world-leading OTA Expedia Group to conduct three integrated plans, each running for three months, across its network of six sites: Expedia.com, Orbitz, Travelocity, Hotels.com, Hotwire.com and CheapTickets. All impressions on these sites drove consumers to a custom landing page with Hong Kong branding, Cathay Pacific getaway information, a carousel of airfares, and a rotating gallery of Hong Kong hotel offers to increase brand awareness and stimulate Hong Kong bookings at the same time.
