Visit California

A targeted social and native content campaign targeting both domestic and international travellers that resulted in over 169 flight purchases, generating over £60k to the California tourism economy.

The objective

To raise awareness that California is open to visitors and to target travellers searching for flights to competing states, such as Florida and Texas, influencing them to re-route their travel decision by booking a flight to California via United Airlines.

The strategy

Alongside a social campaign based around inspirational road trip ideas for California, targeting key audience segments, we created a microsite on Hemispheresmag.com, complete with a landing page and four Road Trip itineraries, each tailored towards a different target audience, including foodies, beachgoers and adventure-seekers.

This would serve as a home for the campaign, both drawing organic traffic and serving those who had clicked through from our social campaign. Visible booking buttons on each story enabled visitors to purchase a flight immediately, and for us to track the results.

For the social component, we wanted audiences to get an instant understanding of California’s variety of road trip experiences. We did this by combining static images showing the diverse landscapes and locations throughout the state with accompanying text that listed the unique selling points of a self-drive vacation on the West Coast.

Rich media played a key part, too. Each road-trip was accompanied by a short promotional video, while the microsite also included a hero clip. As part of a multi-channel approach, a ½ page display ad ran in Hemispheres magazine for two consecutive months, promoting Road Trips in California.