The objective of the campaign was to build awareness of DoubleTree by Hilton as a forward-thinking brand that is committed to pushing the boundaries of hospitality. And the epitome of this hospitality was the world-famous DoubleTree warm chocolate chip cookie welcome.

An innovative campaign would illustrate how the brand is propelling itself into the next frontier, just in time for Hilton’s centennial anniversary. By inserting DoubleTree by Hilton into a broader cultural conversation, we could create broader relevancy as well as brand recognition and affinity

We furthered our commitment to innovation in hospitality by sending our global symbol, the signature DoubleTree warm chocolate chip cookie, to the International Space Station to become the very first food ever baked fresh in space.

The Cookies in Space campaign took shape from a single tweet. Research showed that “cosmic fascination” was one of the top 5 cultural trends on Twitter. So, after Elon Musk tweeted about the SpaceX launch of a Tesla Roadster into space with a spacesuit-wearing mannequin named Spaceman behind the wheel, we responded by asking if Spaceman wanted a DoubleTree cookie for his trip. This caught the attention of another company, Zero G Kitchen, who were in the process of developing a zero-gravity oven to make space more hospitable for long-duration flights. The baking of the cookie symbolized a future of space travel with the comfort of home, much like a good hotel offers.

Research showed us that space-related news had recently seen a resurgence in pop culture and was a timely and trending topic. In a year filled with space news around the 50th anniversary of the lunar landing, the team leaned into this trending conversation, connected it to its business and developed a global, integrated and earned-driven campaign.

To engage a wide array of media, consumer and industry stakeholders, we rolled out a multi-phased earned strategy?leveraging a?series of milestones to?tell the “Cookies in?Space” story consistently throughout the year.

We approached this program with a global lens, incorporating markets around the world, including the United States, Asia Pacific and Europe, Middle East and Africa. We ensured all markets created programs that not only were locally relevant, but also laddered up to our global objective, strategies and messages.

To engage a wide array of media and stakeholders, a multi-phased, year-long approach was rolled out. Key moments included a program launch announcement through a Satellite Media Tour with campaign spokesperson and former NASA astronaut Mike Massimino in June; a space-themed edition of the brand’s Cook(ie) Book featuring cookie-based recipes developed by hotel teams around the world on National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day in August; the rocket launch in November 2019 with interviews and a high frequency campaign designed to reinforce the message association back to the brand and longer view social placements like Facebook’s in-stream; and outreach to the prestigious Smithsonian for display in the National Air & Space Museum in January (note: the museum has been closed temporarily due to the pandemic but will reopen with a DoubleTree “Cookies in Space” display).

In total, the campaign earned 1.8K+ global online, broadcast and radio placements, totaling 7.5B+ impressions – 25x original KPIs.

On launch day, DoubleTree captured an astonishing 99% of all cookie conversation within the hotel industry. There was a +422% increase in brand conversation during launch week and positive social sentiment increased 30pp on announcement day and normalized with a sustained 10pp lift.

A Twitter Brand Study showed an increase of 8pp in brand awareness, a 4pp increase in favorability of DoubleTree and an increase of 5pp in brand consideration. In the words of research firm Kantar Milward Brown, “The DoubleTree Cookies in Space campaign ranks in the top 99.9% of campaigns measured on Twitter with Brand Effect, as historically there’ve only been 2 other studies out of nearly 2,000 studies that saw statistically significant lifts in every metric.”