Growing Elite Trip

About This Project

This plan was originally developed as a strategic proposal for J.Hilburn's Growing Elite Trip: Tour of Italy contest. Its phased, multi-channel structure became the template J.Hilburn used for incentive travel communications going forward, including the following year's Growing Elite Trip: Tour of Italy campaign and four additional stylist incentive trips to Thailand, Vietnam, Dallas, Texas, and Sonoma, California.

I'm including it here because it's a clean, complete example of how I approach a campaign from a blank page, and because it held up: mapping the full customer journey, building a communications system that can sustain itself for a year, and never losing the creative thread that makes people actually want to open the email is a formula that worked across five different trips and multiple years.

The Challenge

J.Hilburn's “Growing Elite Trip: Tour of Italy” was an eleven-month incentive campaign offering independent stylists a shot at one of 25 spots on a trip to Italy, earned through sales and recruiting milestones. A campaign that long carries a real risk: excitement peaks at launch and then quietly dies by month four.

The brief was to design a communications plan that would do three things at once: build anticipation before launch, make the rules and qualification path effortless to understand, and keep stylists engaged, trained, and motivated for the full eleven months without communications fatigue setting in.

Strategic Approach

I structured the plan into four phases, each with its own goal, so that the campaign would feel like it was building toward something rather than repeating itself.

Pre-Launch Phase I: Build Curiosity (April–May)

Rather than announcing the contest outright, I opened with intentionally mysterious teaser content: photos of Italian landmarks, fabric mills, and food, paired with captions inviting stylists to guess what was coming. The goal was to get people talking before they had any real information, which does more for engagement than an announcement ever could.

Pre-Launch Phase II: Drive Clarity (June)

Once curiosity was established, I shifted to a full information push: a themed landing page, a coordinated reveal across Facebook, email, and SMS, and live webinars where stylists could ask questions directly. I also added a physical touchpoint, a postcard mailed via USPS with an Italian countryside photo, to break through the digital noise and make the campaign feel tangible from the start.

Launch and Ongoing Management: Sustain Momentum (July–May)

This was the backbone of the plan: a recurring weekly content rhythm built around a different purpose each day, so the content calendar essentially ran itself once it was set up.

• Monday Motivation, to open the week with energy.
• Trivia Tuesday, a light, game-like touchpoint with small prizes to keep participation fun rather than transactional.
• Wednesday training reminders, tied to a rotating four-topic webinar series.
• Thursday winner announcements, to keep the trivia loop visible and rewarding.
• Friday recaps, that reinforced the week's training content.
• Super Stylist Saturday, to spotlight real progress and milestones.
• Sunday previews, to build anticipation for the week ahead.

Layered on top of that weekly cadence were monthly progress updates, and a deliberate increase in messaging frequency during the final month to push stylists across the finish line without letting the whole campaign feel like a countdown from day one.

Post-Contest Wrap-Up: Close the Loop (June)

The plan didn't end at the trip. I built in winner recognition, a feedback loop asking stylists what future incentives they'd want to see, and a plan to bring photos and stories from the actual trip back to the group, turning this year's winners into next year's motivation.

From Plan to Practice

This framework didn't stay on paper. The following year, it became the foundation for J.Hilburn's next Growing Elite Trip: Tour of Italy campaign, and from there it was adapted four more times for stylist incentive trips to Thailand, Vietnam, Dallas, Texas, and Sonoma, California. Each campaign kept the same phased build (build curiosity, drive clarity, sustain momentum, close the loop) and the same recurring weekly content rhythm, adjusted for each destination's theme and each year's specific goals.

That repeatability was the point. A communications plan that only works once isn't a system, it's a one-off. This one became the standard.