For Shangri-La’s 2015 festive social campaign, we created a magical animated advent calendar for both Instagram and WeChat that followed the journey of a Christmas Star travelling to earth.

In each 15-second episode the Star was warmly welcomed to a Shangri-La destination by a variety of memorable characters.

If viewers screengrabbed the moment the Star’s heart glowed with warmth, then shared it, they could win stays.

This culminated on the 25th of December, with the release of a five minute film, which followed the epic journey of the Star all around the world.

The journey of the star played out over 25 episodes leading up to Christmas; released daily on Instagram and WeChat. This created a unique animated advent calendar that spread the festive cheer – and the brand values – throughout the month.

Each episode was painstakingly crafted to bring out the best in each of the Shangri-La destinations featured – giving us even more to talk about on the individual social profiles of each of the hotels.

To capitalise on the interest in the Star’s story, on December 25th we released a five minute video following the full journey around the world – this was released across all platforms and garnered huge attention.

In under a month, the campaign increased Shangri-La’s Instagram following by 20% and its WeChat following by 40%.

On December 25th, we revealed the full five-minute video following the entire journey of the Star around the world and by the 31st, it had already received over a million views.