The Ritz-Carlton leveraged a years-long partnership with world-renowned photographer and global travel social influencer, Trey Ratcliff to launch and execute the 80 Stays Around the World Campaign. Ratcliff took his passions on the road through 10 cities across Europe and 4 major cities in Japan, leading photo-tours that inspired local participation and garnered global reach.
The tour included photo walks which showcased photography tutorials and hosted participation from Ritz-Carlton properties in each of the cities. It allowed us to reach the networks of the Trey Ratcliff and the brand audience of The Ritz-Carlton, using an authentic voice to shape new perceptions of the brand among our target audiences.
The objective of this campaign was to:
The Ritz-Carlton is committed to creating indelible memories for its guests. This campaign built on this mission by creating an opportunity for its audience to share in those experiences by connecting through social media. Whether participants joined Trey in person, experienced the tour through our immersive Facebook opportunities, followed along through our brand's owned channels, viewed the journey through Trey Ratcliff's efforts, or a combination of these initiatives— our overarching goal was to enable our global audience to connect with and evolve their view of The Ritz-Carlton brand.
Building upon the success of the US-based photo tour, The Ritz-Carlton added two new chapters to its ongoing narrative with influencer, Trey Ratcliff— first in Europe, and then in Japan. In order to maximize the success of the tour and the results of this partnership, The Ritz-Carlton needed clear strategic direction.
For The Ritz-Carlton, the primary audience is the global affluents, a group connected more by their experiences than where they live. By utilizing Facebook's unparalleled targeting capabilities through the brand channel of The Ritz-Carlton we were able to refine that audience to target a local, hyper-interested, artistic segment of that audience. They aligned with the global affluents and represented potential fans of The Ritz-Carlton social audience through lookalike targeting. That target audience included photographers, influencers, as well as fans of Trey Ratcliff's specific brand of experience-based travel photography.
Research was conducted to determine the best way to make an impact both regionally and in each of the 10 cities given differences in language as well social consumption habits. The Ritz-Carlton was looking for additional opportunities to encourage artistic and personal expression through travel.
To promote participation in each city we crafted a complex series of immersive Facebook Canvases. These Canvases were targeted to locals in each city of the tour. Each Canvas worked "in real time," allowing consumers to look around at highlight shots from previous stops, and then provided a carousel of upcoming cities and dates.
We geotargeted the Facebook canvases in each stage of the campaign to hit the upcoming markets as the tour moved from city to city, to build awareness and foot traffic at the next stop in the tour.
Organic efforts aided in generating exposure for the campaign. The Ritz-Carlton staff were embedded into the tour at key cities in order to create Facebook Live videos. These broadcasts gave a "behind-the-scenes" look at the events, highlighted interviews with Trey Ratcliff to provide exclusive photography tips, and showcased The Ritz-Carlton properties where the events were based.
Our message through 80 Stays Around the World was that in the heart of The Ritz-Carlton brand is the commitment to helping our guests create remarkable memories for life. Any brand could say they are committed to creating memories and amazing experiences across the globe, but through this campaign and the partnership, The Ritz-Carlton helped people achieve it.
The campaign was a resounding success. Hundreds of eager photographers joined Trey in each city of the tour and we achieved incredible exposure among our target audience.
Our Facebook Canvases outperformed all our expectations. As mentioned before, the Canvases were created in real time, to show images from the most recent city tours and promote upcoming destinations in an immersive way.
The 10 Canvas units had a combined reach of 1.6 million targeted consumers at a frequency of 3.79. The Canvas units exceeded benchmark performance with an Ad Recall Lift of 10.67%, translating to an estimated 168,800 people who remembered the ad 48 hours after viewing it.
The creative also saw average amazing dwell times of 16.54 seconds, 65.4% above the benchmark of 10 seconds, with users viewing 53.66% of the Canvas on average.
Trey also conducted interviews with influencers at each of the destination cities which were hosted as Facebook Live posts on The Ritz-Carlton page and generated over 10K video views.
Our partnership with Trey Ratcliff continues to generate positive returns in brand exposure and lift around the world.
