HowanInstagramcampaigncreated16,000imagesforatravelbrand

Many travel brands would be happy with consumer “recall” in the region of one-in-three – but there is always more that a company can do, right?

HelloWorld, an online travel agency that is part of the Stella Travel Services group in Australia, was apparently able to boast such a metric but decided it needed to capture the imagination of those playing in the world of Instagram.

In 2015, it teamed up with PR agency HolySmoke, custom digital marketing platform Stackla and its retained media buying house, OMD Australia, to come up with #HelloWorldRelay, an effort to target those using the omnipresent image-sharing social network and (hopefully) build some buzz about the brand as it entered the peak booking season Down Under.

Beginning on World Tourism Day in September 2015, some 80 so-called Instagram “influencers” were tasked with uploading 12 photos in 12 hours to the Stackla service (a map showing places around the world) that illustrated a day in their lives.

Each image was tagged #HelloWorldRelay and then the viral effect kicked in, with other users encouraged to post their own images onto Instagram and other networks.