“It Matters Where You Stay,” even on the fastest-moving place on the planet: TikTok. While the rest of the travel industry is fixated on the destination, Hilton decided to stand “For The Stay” in its first-ever global brand platform. To prove to the world that wonderful things happen when you stay, we set out to pioneer a new type of social format that rewards people for staying. To bring our idea to life, we created a 10-minute TikTok, a first for any brand on the platform. We chose to execute our idea on TikTok because of the fast, viral nature of the platform and TikTok had recently extended its video time limit to 10 minutes. We saw the extended time limit as the perfect opportunity to change the game and disrupt the short-form platform while proving the value of the stay to a new audience of Gen Z travelers.

To prove that “It Matters Where You Stay,” we set out to pioneer a new type of social asset that rewards people for staying. Our goal was to introduce Hilton’s new brand platform in a bold, disruptive way, so we created The Ad You Stay In, the longest TikTok ever posted by a brand. We challenged people on the fastest-moving social platform to stay in a video for 10 minutes. The TikTok takes the viewer through multiple segments of branded content that talk about the Hilton stay in an engaging, true-to-platform way. We partnered with Paris Hilton and some of the biggest creators on TikTok to bring The Ad You Stay In to life authentically. The Ad You Stay In was created specifically for TikTok, leveraging influencers and TikTok-first storytelling techniques to keep viewers engaged for a full 10 minutes.

While other hotel and home rental brands talk about the destination, Hilton’s strategy was to focus on the stay. After launching the new brand platform, “For The Stay,” we wanted to bring the stay to life in new disruptive ways, especially on social. The challenge was to connect an over-100-year-old brand with a younger Gen Z and millennial audience, so we went to the fastest-moving social platform: TikTok. At a time when attention spans are getting shorter and shorter and the average view time of a TikTok is 28 seconds, we challenged people to stay with us in a 10-minute TikTok. The Ad You Stay In was created specifically for TikTok. We cast seven Gen Z and Millennial influencers that belonged to different niches on TikTok to reach our targeted audiences. To further engage our audience, our influencers created supporting content to lead their fans to watch our 10-minute TikTok.

The Ad You Stay In was made specifically for TikTok. We partnered with Paris Hilton and seven of the most influential creators to star in it to make it feel native to the platform. We collaborated with our influencers to write to their tones of voice ensuring they stayed true to their style — whether by dueting a cooking video or creating an original song. The TikTok was created to be mobile-first, captured on an iPhone and vertically on camera. We leaned into the natural storytelling model of TikTok, used TikTok-specific editing techniques, and integrated platform-native fonts. We teased The Ad You Stay In on Paris Hilton’s social channels. At launch, the TikTok was stitched and dueted by our influencers to inspire their fans to watch the full 10 minutes. To sustain the hype, our influencers created an entire ecosystem of supporting content, landing it on For You Pages everywhere.

The Ad You Stay In received 86x more views than the average brand on TikTok. Within 24 hours of launch, it gained 2 million views — within a week it had 16 million. As of writing, it has 35.7 million views. People have spent over 6.5 million minutes with the Ad You Stay In. The campaign ecosystem including creator content has 57.1 million views. We convinced 79,000 TikTokers that Hilton was worth following — an audience growth of 35%. The click-through rate was 145% higher than platform norms, leading to over 100,000 sweepstakes entries and 55,000 new Hilton Honors members. The Ad You Stay In received press coverage in key industry publications including The Drum, AdAge, Contagious, and Campaign US. It garnered 93.5% positive brand sentiment plus several user-generated posts applauding our TikTok. The positivity in the comments was contagious with over 605,000 engagements.