Agency: i.d.e.a.
Client: Curio Collection by Hilton
Campaign: Are You Curious
Delivered: Social campaign, employee program
Curio is a sub-brand of Hilton Hotels that is always looking for a way to stand out. Each Curio location has a different theme, but they all share a common thread of curiosity. So the team at i.d.e.a. dove deep into the world of curiosity and found curiosity is actually a genetic trait tied to the gene DRD4-7R. I fell in love with the gene idea as soon as I saw it, and helped the team grow the idea into an internal facing campaign as well as a consumer facing idea. Joe Nafziger & Austin Bousley never gave up on growing the idea for the client and always believed that big ideas can overcome small budgets. Case study video is below.
The campaign started with genetically testing social influencers for the curiosity gene DRD4-7R. After finding influencers that tested positive for the gene, our strategy department lead my Amy Winhoven, broke them up into 5 major curiosity types: Epicurean, Spiritualist, Challenger, Pathfinder and Culturalist. The influencers were then taken to a Curio property in San Diego to document and share an experience based off their new curiosity type.
The influencers campaign proved to our client the “curiosity gene” idea was relevant to the brand and culturally sticky. The next phase of the campaign now involves all employees at Curio properties taking our online quiz to discover which category they fall into. Each employee will be given a pin based off their curiosity type to create a point of conversation when speaking to guests. Each property will also create experiences based off the 5 curiosity types and reward guests with pins for feeding their curiosity with new experiences from Curio.
