• by Tanya Gazdik , July 24, 2014

A campaign from InterContinental Hotels Group’s Holiday Inn celebrates the inspiring journeys of its many guests, by sharing their unique narratives through the brand’s first digitally led, multimedia marketing approach.

The hotel chain is evolving its “Change Your View” platform, to “Journey to Extraordinary.” The brand aims to bring itself to life in a tangible way, while reintroducing the brand and its current offering to guests, whether they are checking in for the very first time or for their first stay in a while.

The journeys of Holiday Inn brand guests are shared via unique narratives through various social media platforms.

The brand has partnered with organizations including Tumblr, International New York Times, Mashable, Nonfiction Unlimited and MBAs Across America (MBAxAmerica) to leverage their photographic and storytelling capabilities to capture the extraordinary journeys of the brand’s many guests. New content will roll out throughout summer and fall 2014.

For more than 62 years, the Holiday Inn brand has played a pivotal role in helping to enable the extraordinary journeys of millions of guests, said Maurice Cooper, vice president, Holiday Inn Brand, Americas.

“While they may find themselves traveling different roads in life, there is always a Holiday Inn hotel to meet the needs of our guests and help them move forward on their journey,” Cooper says in a release. “Each of our guests has a unique connection to the brand and their own story to tell, which the Journey to Extraordinary campaign creatively celebrates, while hopefully inspiring fresh ones along the way.”

The Holiday Inn brand kicked off the campaign by producing “Stories from Holiday Inn Hotels,” a series of short videos and social media posts highlighting the unique, stories of real guests at various Holiday Inn hotels. This content was shared on the Holiday Inn brand’s Facebook, YouTube and Twitter pages.

The brand also teamed up with Tumblr by bringing together two professional photographers to capture the extraordinary journeys of guests through compelling photography at Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Resort brand properties across the United States.

“Tumblr’s content-driven platform has helped brands tell stories and appeal to audiences in beautiful and moving ways,” said David Hayes, head of creative strategy at Tumblr. “The Holiday Inn brand was the first hotel advertiser on Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more inspired by their elevated work with our creators to celebrate the individuality and journeys of their guests, and the spirit of their brand in their new campaign.”

Each year, more than seven million guests choose to stay at a Holiday Inn hotel in the Americas, making memories and connections along their diverse journeys. Over the past six months, the brand went in search of five real Holiday Inn brand guests to profile in a “Signature Stories” series, and met people from a social entrepreneur to an award-winning rodeo clown, all of whom were on the road for different occasions and are as diverse as the guests who walk through the doors of Holiday Inn hotels every day.

Those selected will be shared in an unscripted documentary style via Tumblr. The first of these stories features Scott Rigsby, a double amputee who is a marathoner, triathlete, world record holder, author and motivational speaker. After years of multiple surgeries, Rigsby made his way down to the Holiday Inn Resort Panama City Beach in hopes of rehabilitating all while facing financial hardship. In Rigsby’s documentary short, he is reunited with the owner of the hotel, Julie Hilton, who helped make his incredible future a reality.

The brand also will partner with MBAxAmerica for its ‘Signature Stories’ series, and will serve as the official hotel sponsor. The program that takes MBA students from some of America’s most prestigious universities and challenges them to take a journey across the U.S., learning from and working with visionary entrepreneurs. In addition, the Holiday Inn brand will document and share the extraordinary journeys of these MBA teams and their entrepreneur collaborators later on through the summer.