INSIGHT
No industry was hit harder during the COVID-19 pandemic than travel. Sudden quarantines, government-imposed border closings and general uneasiness in minds of consumers lead to a $1.8T global industry to decrease 41% in 2020.
Humans are hardwired to explore. While they may have been stuck indoors, we saw many turn to Pinterest, searching for things like “bucket list travel” and “wanderlust”. However, while travel searches increased, specific destination searches actually went down. More than missing the places they could go — Pinterest users missed the very act of traveling. The vibe, the aesthetic, the feeling that only travel can unlock.
CREATIVE
Marriott mirrored this feeling throughout their 2021 campaign welcoming guests back. “The Power of Travel” was the largest global campaign the brand had ever launched and included a range of traditional, digital and social activations.
On Pinterest, we provided their team with trending travel and ‘aesthetic’ searches on our platform. In addition to influencing creative, our trends were integrated into the OOH and digital components of the campaign and curated on the brand’s official profile. All of the components coming together in an interactive experience that helped guide travelers to potential destinations based not on the place but the feeling they had been missing out on.
How it Works
We created a custom pull of travel trends based on Pinterest user search keywords. These trends were then fed into the digital OOH placements running throughout Manhattan during the summer/fall of 2021. Additionally, the OOH creative featured a QR code that, once scanned, would take users to a custom quiz to help answer the question Where can we take you? Based on answers to the quiz, users would be redirected to corresponding mood boards on Marriott’s Pinterest profile that featured inspirational photography of different travel ‘aesthetics’ and the beautiful properties to experience them IRL.
RESULTS
Campaign performance exceeded expectations, causing agency and brand clients to extend run of paid support well beyond initial plan. Earned media coverage was also extremely successful, mentioning the campaign in multiple industry publications (AdWeek, ModernRetail, PRWeek, PureWow), included in Pinterest quarterly earnings coverage as well as cited in Pinterest’s AdAge Marketer of the Year article. One of the more surprising results was the OOH QR code integration — a first for a Pinterest campaign — smashed previous offline-to-online benchmarks, driving significant traffic to both the quiz experience and official Marriott Pinterest profile.
My role: Pinterest creative strategy, connections planning and trend analysis
Creative: 72andSunny || Production: Wildlife || Media: PublicisMedia