Away Bets on Social 'Programming' With New Series 'Actually Away'
Away's new six-episode social series 'Actually Away' lifted engagements 125% and views 58% in week one, hitting 1.4 million impressions by early September, all on organic media.
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The brief
- Away launched 'Actually Away', a six-episode scripted social series following two travelers who meet at Grand Central Station, inspired by a real travel story.
- First-week results: engagements up over 125%, views up over 58%, engagement up over 43%; by early September the series had about 1.4 million impressions and an engagement rate above 78%.
- The series is produced largely in-house by Senior Director of Social Cayla DeRegis with external production partner Michael Gaston, and the strategy remains fully organic with no paid media so far, tracked across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Away, the luggage brand that rose to prominence during the late-2010s direct-to-consumer boom, has launched a scripted social series called Actually Away as part of a broader shift toward a "programming" approach to social media.
The first season runs six episodes so far. It follows two travelers who cross paths at New York City's Grand Central Station, connecting over a dead phone and delayed trains. The company said the plot draws on a real travel story, and it plans to source future storylines from customers' travel experiences.
The goal is to create a new destination for travel storytelling told across multiple episodes, designed to hook viewers the way a traditional TV series would, according to Quynh Dang, Away's VP of brand. As consumer behavior shifts and social becomes "the new TV," Away wants to show up where people spend their time with "a seven- to eight-episode storyline that is compelling" enough to "pull people away from a scrolling" and "replacing it with what they might have digested in terms of media on TV and streaming," Dang said.
The premise is deliberately relatable: nearly everyone has faced travel disruptions, and nearly everyone hopes to meet someone special. Dang said the series adds mystery to the plot to keep audiences coming back.
Early numbers
The early returns look strong. "First week out, our engagements were up over 125%, our views up over 58%, our engagement [was] up over 43%, so already our hypothesis of investing in this type of content, raising our baseline for all metrics on organic social, is already proving to be true," Dang said.
Those figures have continued to grow. As of early September, the series had generated roughly 1.4 million total impressions with an engagement rate above 78%, according to the company.
Dang said she hopes the gains lift performance across all of Away's content, so that "when we introduce significant moments in product, campaigns, or stories we want to tell, that we've grown and expanded who is getting to see that content."
For Actually Away, the brand is tracking organic and earned media across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube to gauge genuine audience interest.
"When you have strong brand storytelling, when you have strong brand activations and moments, it lifts all boats," Dang said. "We'll continue to monitor and see if that proves to be true and whether or not we have to augment the strategy with any paid [media], but for right now it's organic."
Built in-house
The series reflects a strategic change for Away: rather than planning posts in isolation, the team now treats social as programming, betting that serialized, engaging content can deliver the views and engagement the brand wants.
Away's in-house team leads the effort. Senior Director of Social Cayla DeRegis develops the scripts based on true stories, and the company worked with an external production partner, Michael Gaston, to produce the series.
The series' performance will help determine whether Away scales its in-house production operation. "As we explore how this goes and how this grows into the future, we can figure out different avenues of production," Dang said. "But for right now, it was a labor of love."
The launch has also drawn interest from outside the company. "Since we launched we've gotten a lot of inbounds from production people and creatives who want to participate in this project," Dang said. "[It's a] different aspect to the crowdsourcing aspect of the strategy. The whole goal was to really mine the stories from the community up, and now we're seeing that can include creatives, can include producers and writers as well."
Away, which faced business challenges in 2019 and has since revamped its approach, joins a growing list of brands producing original series for social platforms.
Based on Marketing Brew; instagram.com
Filed under away, social-media-strategy, brand-storytelling, social-video-series, organic-social
Amara Osei
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News editor covering industry trends and analytics at Marketing Herald.