Winner: Hilton Hotels & Resort – Announcing an Authentic Experience For Chinese Travelers
In the past decade, the number of Chinese citizens traveling abroad has grown from virtually zero to an estimated 56 million in 2011. Thus, Hilton Hotels and Resorts saw the opportunity to grow its presence, revenue and reputation among Chinese travelers by providing hotel amenities and services important to them. Leaning on its 20-years-plus of experience in doing business in China, Hilton developed Hilton Huanying (“welcome” in Chinese)—hotel amenities like Chinese teas and breakfast offerings and other services that appealed to Chinese guests.
Hilton launched the program in San Francisco on August 17, 2011, followed by a tour in China that included face-to-face meetings with influential travel agencies. Media outreach included business, trade and consumer target media in China and abroad. The results were immediate: booked room nights by outbound Chinese travelers increased 122% during Q1 2012. —SVC
Honorable Mentions:
Bristol-Myers Squibb – Turning the HIV Fight into a Movement: To raise awareness of HIV, Bristol-Myers Squibb partnered with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, which created “Home,” a production that chronicled 10 individuals with powerful HIV stories. PR garnered 90 million total impressions and a 123% increase in daily unique visitors to its site after the Dec. 1, 2011, premiere.
CIGNA – Haitian Creole Triangular Postcard: Finding phone messages to be ineffective in reaching its Haitian clientele in Florida, Cigna’s tri-lingual (French, Creole and English) pictorial postcard achieved better results: a savings in 2011 of $624 in healthcare costs for those customers who received it.
Euro RSCG Worldwide PR with Transitions Optical – Creating Cultural Connections to Reinforce Eye Health Leadership: A Multicultural Toolkit for eye care professionals plus extensive media outreach to consumers and optical care trades resulted in 146 million-plus consumer/ trade impressions.
Flowers Communications Group – MillerCoors Uban Entrepreneurs Series: To support entrepreneurship in urban communities, FCG digitally refreshed the existing Entrepreneurs Series with social and educational online video components, resulting in 400 million media impressions and an 84.3% increase in Twitter followers.
National Heart, Lung & Blood Institute – The Heart Truth: NHLBI and Ogilvy PR used the longtime“Red Dress”icon ofThe HeartTruth campaign for a fashion show featuring top designers and celebrity spokespeople, resulting in more than 60 million media impressions and coverage by top Spanish-language broadcast outlets.
National Kidney Disease Education Program – Kidney Sundays Helps African Americans Understand their Risk for Kidney Disease: The NKDEP and Ogilvy PR deployed community partners for grassroots outreach, a national radio tour and a Facebook page to target African American churches. Its grassroots goal of reaching 30 churches was exceeded by 1,164%.
Porter Novelli – SOYJOY: “Yo SOY” Hispanic Campaign: The snack bar company partnered with social mobile network MocoSpace to build an online/mobile destination featuring SOYJOY branded badges and special promotions, resulting 105,000 MocoSpace SOYJOY fans in 10 weeks.
Time Warner Cable – Hispanic Heritage Month Campaign - El Reto Fast Five: To drive on-demand viewership of the movie Fast Five, TWC built a Spanish Facebook application that gave fans a chance to win concert tickets to see musician and actor Don Omar, resulting in $1.3 million in revenue from views of Fast Five.