The Upgrade List

Digital Social Video

Nobody knows a city better than the people who live there —
and Capital One wants to share their stories.

For “The Upgrade List,” Capital One wanted to reach an affluent audience of travel enthusiasts and build credibility as a premium brand. They also wanted to highlight the many benefits of being an eligible cardholder, such as the ability to score hard-to-get reservations at partner restaurants across the U.S. and gain access to the best prices on flights, hotels, and rental cars.

PLAN YOUR NEXT GETAWAY
Influencer

To reach the client’s target audience, The Foundry created a lush, sophisticated, custom destination rooted in the trusted Travel + Leisure brand, with recommendations from its expert editors on trending vacation locales. For each location, we created a live-action video “hosted” by a local insider in the hospitality industry who guided viewers through their top dining, hotel, and activity recommendations.

Page views
k
Engagements
k

The enthusiastic guides shared what they love about their cities and provided invaluable recommendations — not just what sights to see, but how to truly experience the destination like a local. In Q1 2024, we added two European destinations—Florence and Santorini—to the mix and created lush videos that captured the true essence of each locale, and featured off-the-beaten-path places to dine, stay, and explore.

To round out the experience, two written articles contained additional recommendations, along with snackable video clips and tips for taking advantage of Capital One cardmember benefits.

If that wasn’t enough, The Foundry created a vacation recommendation engine, aptly named “The Travel Concierge,” that served travel content based on user preferences. Each destination tile opened to reveal a host of suggestions for luxury accommodations, dining, and activities in over 30 locations.

The native destination and posts package garnered more than 792K page views and 17.2K engagements. Audience learnings proved the campaign reached the ideal audience interested and ready to engage with upmarket content. It was successful at influencing the majority of competitive cardholders, highlighting the potential for conversion or addition of the Capital One card to their portfolio.