National State Tourism Directors Mercury Awards > Branding and Integrated Marketing Campaign: State Marketing Budget More Than $15 Million

Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau

#LetHawaiiHappen

About This Entry:

As a travel destination, many potential travelers perceive Hawaii as too familiar and not exotic enough to justify the distance and cost of a vacation. However, while Hawaii is renowned for its expected, iconic attractions, each island also has a set of unique and alluring “unexpected” experiences. For this campaign, we wanted to show that the best parts of travelling in Hawaii are the unplanned moments in your “planned” vacation. While Hawaii’s iconic destinations are a must for your itinerary, the moments you experience when you wander from the suggested route are often the most memorable. All you have to do is “Let Hawaii Happen.”

The “Let Hawaii Happen” campaign was designed to appeal to those in the Hawaii target audience who have never been to Hawaii. This Hawaii target audience is younger, notably more technology-focused, and possesses a slightly different mindset when it comes to travel motivations. While their core travel experience is still about fun, relaxation, escape, and learning about the world, these younger explorers are seeking a deeper, more enriching experience than their older counterparts.

By creating the “Let Hawaii Happen” campaign, we sought to meet three main brand building objectives:
• To educate consumers by correcting travel/vacation misconceptions about Hawaii
• To demonstrate the broad diversity of experiences available in Hawaii
• To encourage search and usage of #LetHawaiiHappen

Campaign Strategy:

A unique brand identity was developed for each island based on the emotions that they elicit. For example, Kauai is associated with relaxation and leisure while Oahu has a more energetic, urban and social vibe. The communication of these feelings enriches the target audience’s knowledge so they are better able to identify which Hawaiian island emotionally fits into their own life journey. By positioning the Hawaiian Islands as a series of unique, diverse experiences, we are able to demonstrate to our target audience that there is much more to the islands than the clichés.

As part of the evolving “Let Hawaii Happen” campaign, TV spots highlighting the brand identity for each island were produced to showcase unexpected experiences on Kauai, Oahu, Maui, and the island of Hawaii. The spots utilized a unique filming technique that allows viewers to literally follow our travelers around on their very different island journeys.

In addition to the TV spots, vibrant ads were created to showcase unexpected experiences on Kauai, Oahu, Maui, and the island of Hawaii. Full page images of authentic island moments are featured and viewers are invited to follow the local influencer/photographer via their social media handle.


The call-to-action – “#LetHawaiiHappen” – encourages visitors to follow our travelers’ journeys on each of four very different Hawaiian Islands and share their own authentic Hawaii experiences via social media. Through this engagement on social media, we have opened up a channel to our younger, more tech-savvy target travelers. By monitoring the use of the #LetHawaiiHappen hashtag, we are able to evaluate the popularity of the campaign.

Results:

As of August 2016, the #LetHawaiiHappen campaign earned 781.44 million impressions on social media. In May 2017, this number climbed to 1.12 billion. In August 2016, the #LetHawaiiHappen campaign had 166,140 hash tag uses on Twitter and Instagram; this number reached 248,240 in May 2017. Video views combining all campaign videos went from 20,149,427 in August 2016 to 58,447,427 in May 2017. These numbers indicate the massive success of the #LetHawaiiHappen campaign in building brand awareness.

Why This Is A Finalist: 

The vision for this campaign of showing the unplanned side of a 'planned' vacation was great. The videos are from a first person point of view of people traveling to Hawaii for different reasons, and realizing all that Hawaii has to offer. The simplicity of this campaign was great, especially since it was executed in a very immersive, millennial-inspired way. The creative treatment is engaging, impactful and highly relevant to millennials.