February 14, 2019
We’re all huge fans of Morocco. It’s a dynamic and vibrant country with a huge amount to offer visitors, including ancient cities, mountain ranges, rolling deserts, and golden beaches on both the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts. Despite this wealth of cultural and geographic riches, the kingdom’s lesser-known regions and cities often take a backseat to more famous locations, with destinations like Casablanca, Marrakesh, and Essaouira regularly topping the vacation wish lists of travelers from around the globe.
In late 2018, we started working with the Moroccan National Tourism Office on an exciting campaign that would help position Morocco as an international destination and showcase the creativity and unique personality of the country. We wanted to increase awareness of some of Morocco’s lesser known regions and cities and inspire potential visitors to get to know the whole of this unique country.
To help tell this story, our Creative Partnerships team developed an innovative social and microsite experience. This unique collaboration between industry travel influencers and design illustrators, yielded the Moments in Morocco campaign. Hosted on three microsites, the content created for this campaign offered unique insights into Morocco for French, German, and English speaking travelers.
We wanted to take the campaign content to the next level, so we sent three talented influencers from France, Germany, and the UK on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Morocco, each exploring a different city and experiencing unique activities. Their three-day itineraries each told a distinct story and showcased their experiences through beautifully shot videos and long-form blog posts.
While this content told three stunning stories, to really convey the transformative and magical feeling each influencer felt when traveling to Morocco, we enlisted the services of illustrators to merge illustration and live action footage. The result was a web experience that seamlessly blended stylish illustration with beautifully shot footage and imagery, bringing the influencers’ experiences to life and conveying the spirit of Morocco.
Sitting alongside the influencer content, we developed detailed destination guides covering food and drink, adventure, nightlife, culture, and relaxation. Great care was taken to ensure that the content highlighted regions across the country; users discovered information on shopping in Fez, surfing at Sol Taghazout, and hiking in the Atlas Mountains, to name just a few. With over fifty separate guides, focusing on locations and activities from all across Morocco, visitors to the microsites had all the information they needed to create their perfect trip.
Through this diverse mix of content, the Moments in Morocco microsites helped transform the way visitors saw this spectacular country. It also inspired them and gave them the tools to book trips and activities through Expedia.fr, Expedia.de, and Expedia.uk, helping to drive conversion.
As a final treat, we commissioned the illustrators to create five digital postcards, based on the video and photographic content shot by our influencers. Uniquely illustrated and inspired by this campaign, these could be shared with friends and family, helping to drive more visits to the microsites.
The Moments in Morocco campaign ran from August to November 2018 and was supported by creative display media on Expedia.fr, Expedia.de, and Expedia.uk, as well as our audience extension tool, PassportAds. This approach enabled the Moroccan National Tourism Office to reach travel shoppers wherever they browse and book on the internet.
The campaign goals were set around impressions and engagement. Over the course of the campaign, the microsites had more than 10,000 visitors and more than 2 million impressions were delivered through influencer content alone. Average time on the microsites was an impressive four minutes, demonstrating just how engaged visitors were with the content.
We have a long and successful relationship with the Moroccan National Tourism Office and were thrilled to work with them on this campaign. Learn more about how our Creative Partnerships team works with destinations like Morocco to deliver unique and compelling media experiences across our global travel brands.
