A British January in the middle of a lockdown. Nobody could go anywhere, and the whole travel category had gone quiet on the theory that there was no point advertising a holiday people were legally unable to take. The German National Tourist Board had launched a voice-assistant planning tool, and wanted UK audiences to keep Germany in mind for a trip they could not yet book.

A group of UK creators each built the German road trip they intended to take the moment they were allowed to. Long-form itineraries rather than pretty pictures: the Rhine, the Alps, forest hikes, beer gardens, historic cities. Short-form video showed the planning tool actually doing the planning. We then built Germany: Simply Inspiring, a hub curating the strongest Germany writing by leading creators, and amplified it into the UK market.

Engagement ran at several times the rate destination content normally earns, from an audience that had time on its hands and nowhere to be. The hub drew tens of thousands of visitors, and the articles it carried drew more visits still. Most telling was the reading time: comfortably above the site average, and concentrated in a handful of British cities. Not idle browsing. People planning.