Hilton Launched a Mega Ad Blitz a Year Ago. Did it Work?

25.08.2023 - 13:09 / skift.com / Sean Oneill / Brand Marketing

Hilton Worldwide debuted a major international marketing effort a year ago – July 25, 2022 – that focused on reliable lodging experiences as its differentiator. It also debuted its first “platform” for the Hilton “masterbrand” — which essentially means it added the tagline “for the stay” to all of its Hilton messaging.

So how did it go?

The hotel giant said it saw sales, awareness, and market share gains from the effort, its largest marketing push in six years. It said the overall effort generated at least 16 billion “impressions” in the past year across TV ads, social media, paid online ads, billboards, and other channels.

It’s difficult to precisely know if the campaign helped Hilton’s reservations because we can’t compare a world without the ad blitz. But there are positive signs.

In the first quarter, Hilton said it saw a 17% year-over-year gain in consumers searching for “Hilton” online, for 11 million searches. The first quarter was a peak time for hotel booking season ahead of summer in the northern hemisphere.

Hilton also cited a survey that found that 59% of travelers considered Hilton for leisure travel in the first quarter — a 10.9 percentage point gain over the same period a year earlier.

The hotel giant said the brand marketing helped persuade customers who are actively booking hotel stays but are indecisive about making a final transaction. It said its so-called “lower funnel conversion” rose by 4 percentage points quarter-over-quarter in the first quarter. Hilton claimed it had data to show it was now ahead of Marriott in enjoying its brand halo as a tool for persuading indecisive travelers to book with its brand.

Previous campaigns featured images of destinations or swimming pools, essentially hiding their product in the background of scenic shots. Hilton’s ad blitz instead put rooms and lobbies front-and-center, aiming to highlight Hilton amenities, such as the ability for families to be able to have confirmed reservations for connected hotel rooms, to bring small pet dogs (that are accepted at about 5,000 of its roughly 9,000 properties), and to avoid the chance of surprises (such as housekeeping fees at many short-term rentals and vacation homes).

“We went all-in on building equity across all 19 of Hilton’s brands together, rather than dividing our dollars and impact,” said a company spokesperson. The portfolio approach maximized the company’s brand equity enough that it plans to “continue to do this.”

Ad agency network TBWA\Chiat\Day NY crafted the effort. AdAge honored the effort with a “creativity award for best rebrand” in April. TBWA was once Airbnb’s ad agency.

Hilton also bet much more heavily on TikTok as a platform than it had in past ad blitzes. In the first 48 hours