Branded content is nothing new in the travel space, with travel sites, hotels and airlines using sponsored content to inspire travel and their products. Over time, the mediums have changed but the parameters of branded content remains: introduce brands to wider culture, and give audiences a means of connecting with brands in a way that adds value beyond product benefits.

Expedia was one of the first travel sites to use branded content to promote its brand and unique belief that travel is not about getting from A to B but the experiences you have once you get there. While the rest of the category relies on spokespeople and characters hustling the latest discount, we use branded content to tell stories of real people, and real travel experiences.

Our campaign ran in the US on TV and online, so generally speaking restrictions are minimal. Given our content ran online, we were free from platform enforced restrictions but because of its broach reach needed a story and star that resonated with a wide audience to engage the highest number of potential donors to St. Jude.

Travel is a major theme of Throw Back Thursday, but no travel brand was taking advantage of it. That’s what made #ThrowMeBack such a great opportunity for Expedia.

We used a simple call to action: tag your photo on Instagram or Twitter with @Expedia and #ThrowMeBack, for a chance to be sent back to the place in your photo.

We focused communication around Thursdays (building on the #tbt trend), enlisting popular travel Instagrammers to get the word out and inviting their followers to play along.

Each Thursday for eight weeks, more travelers sent in their pics hoping to recreate their favorite travel memories. We selected the best submissions we flew them back to recreate their photo. We kept the conversation going with GIFs, user-generated Instagram videos, and a film that showed one of our many winners’ journey to be thrown back.

The video truly reached a worldwide audience; people from Russia, the Philippines, Spain, Brazil, and Mexico shared out the video.

The Huffington Post exclaimed: “The wide-eyed surprise, the shy little smiles and the big fuzzy hugs are all real -- and we were so thrilled to see Santa reach his final destination.”

Other notable stats:

- 290,065 likes, comments, shares on the video over the month of December (2014)

- Over 510,000 YouTube video views

- 193 websites covered the video launch, resulting in over 70.8MM total reach in earned media

Best of all, we tripled the amount of donations to St. Jude for the month of December. Over 1,634,500 points were donated to help kids fight cancer at St. Jude.