TV shows and social media posts spark inspiration to travel, but travelers struggle to find their perfect shoppable guide in one place. Local Lens was developed to satisfy that audience need.

The brief was to meet travelers beyond the booking moment with a new take on a traditional destination guide, and to remove planning complexity with a tailor-made itinerary.

Our objective was to offer the Expedia audience a new destination-focused travel film series that removes complexity from trip planning, with emotive storytelling at its core. The overall goal of the film series was to spark inspiration to travel while offering a clear path to booking.

Our Scottish Highlands episode is a story of coming home, as movie star Ewan McGregor reunites with his big brother Colin to recreate an adventure they had as children, and explore the meaningful places that informed their happiest childhood memories.

The McGregor brothers embark on a rip-roaring camper van journey, full of abundant Scottish nature and joyful reminiscing—and meet a few friends along the way. They brave a cold plunge in a 39 F loch, encounter a traffic jam with 300 sheep, and evoke the Scottish spirit in an impromptu sing-along.

The film drove a significant 2% increase in Expedia brand favourability. Across social and digital, Local Lens Scotland exceeded our total reach and engagement goals with 5.2m social video views and 59k likes, a tenfold increase in editorial dwell time, and 170m impressions across programmatic and social channels in three weeks. Local Lens Scotland reached an Earned Media Value of close to $1m ($959k). YouTube views for the film were 20 times higher than benchmark, and our Instagram “link in bio” drove 10 times the average click-through to Expedia Magazine. Social sentiment data has been overwhelmingly positive, with comments directionally showing how Local Lens was able to spark desire to book through giving a local’s unique view of a destination: “I stopped everything I was doing to watch the full video.” “Ok... I'm adding Scotland to my list. Wow.” “Scotland is now on my bucket list!”