Europeans know Hawaiʻi's beaches but rarely understand its history. Emotive Travel Marketing partnered with the UK's most-visited museum on a landmark exhibition, 'Hawaiʻi: A Kingdom Crossing Oceans', then built an integrated campaign and trade programme to maximise a rare cultural moment — delivering 50 million impressions, reaching 80,000 culturally engaged visitors and launching Hawaiʻi as a new destination for a UK operator.
Five-star Guardian review and ~80,000 exhibition visitors
50 million campaign impressions valued at c. £170,000
13,300 entries to the Journeyscape holiday competition
Hawaiʻi's cultural depth is largely invisible to European audiences, who know the beaches but not the kingdom. When the British Museum planned Hawaiʻi: A Kingdom Crossing Oceans — marking the 200th anniversary of King Kamehameha II and Queen Kamāmalu's 1824 visit to London — the opportunity was clear, but so was the risk: a sponsorship that sat politely on an acknowledgement panel would change nothing.
Emotive Travel Marketing negotiated a strategic partnership with the UK's most-visited museum, then built an integrated programme to make it work across every discipline. We wrapped the exhibition in the ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi campaign — rooted in Hawaiian language and proverbs, delivered digitally by our agency partner Story9 under ETM's direction across CTV, premium travel titles, Meta and DOOH, including geo-targeted retargeting of exhibition attendees. And we used the museum as a platform for trade and media activation, so the cultural moment converted into commercial relationships.
PR / Partnership: The exhibition opened to a five-star review in The Guardian and four stars in The Times and The Telegraph, reaching ~80,000 culturally engaged visitors and enabling ~50 million campaign impressions valued at c. £170,000. It was the museum's first exhibition to feature ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi throughout.
Consumer: The ʻŌlelo campaign exceeded KPIs in both markets: UK video completion averaged 81.5% (92.4% on CTV), slider interaction 4.67% vs a 2% KPI, retargeting CTR 1.14%; German retargeting delivered 0.63% CTR vs a 0.25% KPI. Museum-amplification activity achieved a 7% interaction rate. [Trailfinders/Fairflight booking results due 7 July — to add.]
Trade: An after-hours, curator-led tour and hosted dinner for nine key product managers turned the exhibition into a relationship platform; Journeyscape launched Hawaiʻi as a new destination, with its competition drawing 13,300 entries.
