In 2018, tourism from New York to Hawaii was lagging. In fact, our research found that New Yorkers were taking less vacations overall — with less than 50% of them using up their available vacation time.

We needed a way to convince New Yorkers to leave the office and make Hawaii top of mind for their next vacation destination.

Rather than try to get New Yorkers to give up their work to take a vacation, we instead created a campaign encouraging them to take a “Workcation”.

WFH (Work From Hawaii), a unique travel campaign that repositioned the islands as the perfect destination for remote work.We created six bespoke residencies -- one on each of Hawaii’s six islands -- designed to entice New York’s top six industries. From thousands of applications, we selected our residents, then shared their transformative experiences via Instagram ads targeted to peers in their field.

The program didn’t just inspire a 53% increase in organic travel queries from New York, it helped generate an incredible $342 Million increase in US East visitor spending across the islands.

The earned media strategy was designed to be integrated and amplify the creative and digital launch of the WFH paid-social and OOH campaign. We drove awareness around the “always working” behavior of New Yorkers using our WFH survey results – then directed those interested to the Work From Hawaii website to apply for a chance to win a residency spot. We shifted New Yorker's perception of Hawaii and focused on increasing awareness of the Hawaii's unique attributes -- highlighting rich stories about each island’s culture, authentic cuisine and opportunities for adventure. We brought the Work From Hawaii Residency experience to life by creating high impact media moments around the launch of the campaign (in May) as well as the journey of our six residents (in September) by utilizing all campaign assets: Hawaii WFH commissioned data, the custom workspaces, local itineraries that highlight each island’s local experts, artisans, businesses and culinary

We created WFH (Work From Hawaii), a unique travel campaign that repositioned the islands as the perfect destination for remote work. To launch it, we created six bespoke residencies -- one on each of Hawaii’s six islands -- designed to entice New York’s top six industries. Then we advertised the residencies in places where workaholics frequent most: LinkedIn, WeTransfer, WeWork spaces, and OOH ads directly on their commutes. From the thousands of applications we received, we selected our ideal first residents and followed them to Hawaii to capture their transformative experiences. Then using highly targeted ads across each social platform, we shared each of our residents stories to peers directly in their fields. At the end of each inspiring ad, we gave our viewers exactly the tools they needed to book their very own WFH trip.

From almost the second the WFH campaign was announced, it was the talk of New York. The campaign was covered by over 300 media organizations from newspapers, national talk shows, top tech and lifestyle sites, and even the local weather. In addition to our paid views, we garnered 505,887,039 Earned Impressions.

More important than the coverage though, was how the campaign resonated with our target audience. More than 2,000 New Yorkers applied to be a part of the residencies. While countless more workaholics from around the globe asked us to bring the program to their city next.

The program didn’t just inspire a 53% Increase in organic travel queries from New York, it helped generate an incredible $342 Million increase in US East visitor spending across the islands.