Client – Expedia
Markets – North America
Timing – July 2014- August 2014
Agencies/Vendors – 180LA, Instagram
Tech Word Cloud – social listening, native analytics tool, engagement, social listening technology, content, social media, performance & attribution
Expedia tapped into one of Instagram’s most popular trending topics – #tbt (Throw Back Thursdays) – to stand out in their category and to drive engagement.
Expedia’s goals were twofold: to stand out during the peak summer travel season and to grow their Instagram followers. They needed a summer campaign to differentiate their brand in the travel category while simultaneously driving social engagement.
Expedia’s “Thrown Back Thursdays” campaign took advantage of one of Instagram’s most popular hashtags #tbt – which has over 300 million posts. Travel is a major theme of #tbt, but no other brands were taking advantage of the trend. Expedia developed a social campaign that played on the nostalgia invoked by travel photos, inviting users to tag their photos on Instagram or Twitter with @Expedia and #ThrowMe- Back for a chance to revisit the location in the photo. Expedia didn’t want to just build on a trend, but to also tap into the emotion of how travel makes people feel – emphasizing that it’s not about how you get from place to place; it’s the experience and memories you create.
In addition to Instagram and Twitter as platforms, Expedia used native analytics tools as well as social listening to measure the success of the campaign. Facebook analytics, Twitter analytics, as well as Sysomos gave deeper insights into their findings.
Instagram provided the campaign’s media platform, while 180LA was responsible for all social strategy, content generation and management, as well as executing the campaign, including producing and shooting the film “Back To Ocean Beach” that launched the campaign.
Throughout the duration of the Thrown Back Thursday campaign, Expedia received over 20,000 submissions. The campaign generated over 5 million impressions and 300k social. The engagements, including likes, comments and share, saw 92% positive sentiment, and Expedia doubled their Instagram following, fulfilling both of the campaign’s major goals.