Today’s workforce is working harder than ever and only using 70% of their vacation Over 169 million days were forfeited, amounting to $52.4 billion in lost benefits. However the benefits of vacation actually make you more productive, happier, and healthier. Hilton knows first-hand this is an issue and wants to inspire more leisure travel whether it be an extended weekend trip or longer vacation stay.

We sought out to find an influential media partner to help us inspire and drive leisure travel. We discovered PopSugar also recognized their 20MM users have the desire to travel yet PopSugar was lacking the content they needed. In collaboration, Hilton and PopSugar launched a new channel called “Find Your Happy” intended for readers to live their best life, with travel content a key editorial focus.

PopSugar, Hilton, and the media agency worked together in developing content topics for custom videos and editorial. PopSugar produced the content, seamlessly highlighting Hilton in the integrated videos, tapping into unique offerings and team members directly from the Hilton properties.

The year-long partnership was a massive undertaking, delivering 48 custom travel content videos, 12 of which have deep integration as they are shot at various Hilton properties across the country. Each integrated video features a Hilton brand in a distinctive way that naturally aligns with the video theme. Additionally, Hilton is incorporated in 24 pieces of native editorial in the section, totalling 72 pieces of custom Hilton integrated content.

The content was promoted socially on PopSugar’s channels to drive viewers. In addition, Hilton integrated the content into their owned social channels and website. Content was available to the user across devices including mobile, and desktop.

The integrated partnership significantly over-delivered with consumers devouring Find Your Happy video content (+231% vs planned). PopSugar is driving Unaided Awareness results against our Leisure Seeker audience (+12.7% pt increase) in Millward Brown Study, showing the highly integrated program is keeping the Hilton Portfolio of brands top of mind. Additionally, the partnership delivered close to $1MM in incremental revenue and over 2,800 new bookings to Hilton.com

Impressions served: 68.8MM with over 8MM video views on custom videos, and 586K impressions on custom native editorial. Custom videos have been shared 50K times and native editorial has been shared 41K times to date.

It was so successful, that we have renewed our partnership in 2016 with more travel content and custom videos across Hilton Worldwide brands.