INSPIRING THE STAY
HILTON
GROWING HILTON'S VIDEO ECOSYSTEM
In 2022, Hilton approached me with one goal: make Hilton the most discoverable hospitality brand on YouTube.
Across 3 years, we:
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Transformed a network of 950+ disconnected channels into one centralized brand presence on YouTube.
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Built a production and distribution system for always-on content.
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Grew the number of hours people watched Hilton content on YouTube from 1K to 450K hours per year. More than 1000 hours every day.
We even won some awards for our work:
Here's how we did it:
1. Consolidating Hilton’s YouTube presence
Complex matrix organizations notoriously struggle with managing franchise partners across multiple regions. To support individual property partners, we established a social governance team and designed Hilton’s first ever media asset manager. This gave Hilton a centralized location to organize assets for current and future use.
2. Streamlining production and distribution
Growing an in-house content team allowed Hilton to shift from their slow, bottom-up approach to a more flexible top-down content model. Instead of individual hotels spending time and money on content development, Hilton could provide productions as a service. And hotels could amplify existing shoot outputs for a consistent global brand.
3. Establishing content franchises and series
My 9 Things — unfiltered interviews on what celebrities pack for any kind of stay
Doubled as a paid media ads with American tennis stars, the campaign reduced paid media spend by 41% while generating a 48% higher average view duration for ads — meaning people chose to watch even after the "Skip ad" button popped up.
Stay Tours — social-first tours of popular Hilton properties
Originally pilotted across 28 hotels, the series has expanded to 101 key destinations and continues to scale. These property tours have contributed to significant boosts to customer conversions ($2.7M+ in revenue, FY24-25) as 87.9% of viewers stay to watch the entire video.
Off The Menu — award-winning documentaries on Hilton's esteemed chefs
As Hilton's inaugural F&B format, the series has generated 39M+ views across platforms (2 year runtime) and generated significant positive PR for key restaurants at properties.
