Objectives

With only four hotels open at the beginning of 2017, EVEN Hotels needed to raise brand awareness among wellness-minded travelers to drive demand for our current hotels and upcoming locations.

Knowing we would reach our target audience primarily on social media, we turned to short-form videos — filming real guests' real stories — to show how EVEN Hotels creates access to the options that enable wellness on your own terms.

Strategy and Execution

To increase brand awareness nationally and in our target markets, among our wellness-minded target audiences, we created short-form videos that:

• Supported our brand's new creative platform. We showed how EVEN Hotels helps you "keep your good thing going" – whatever that is for you – with options for maintaining (or bettering) your routine while you're on the road.
• Starred real hotel guests. We approached three real EVEN Hotels guests – who had previously praised our hotels on social media – to show how they use EVEN Hotels to keep their good thing going. By casting three real EVEN fans – one aligning with each of our three data-driven brand personas – our real stories had authenticity in their DNA and resonated with our audiences.
• Told compelling stories. We shot our stories at EVEN Hotel Brooklyn, where our three guests-turned-stars showed how EVEN Hotels was instrumental in their successes: bicycling long-distance from New York to Philadelphia; writing and publishing a motivational book; and hosting a healthy mom-and-me weekend getaway.
• Showed our brand pillars in action. We focused the three storylines on the areas that make EVEN Hotels unlike any other brand: the amenities that allow you to eat well, rest easy, keep active and accomplish more. With a focus on our unique pillars, our videos could not have been for any brand other than EVEN Hotels.
• Were optimized for each channel. Ranging from :08 to :30 seconds, each video was tailored to fit its respective platform: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. We included special edits for Instagram Stories and for cinemagraphs on both Facebook and Instagram.
• Supported an integrated campaign. Other activations launching with our short-form videos included editorial partnerships with health-focused publications, dynamic programmatic ads, and in-hotel events.

Results

The social campaign featuring our short-form videos generated positive lifts in brand metrics including aided awareness, brand favorability, consideration intent and affinity. We saw even more pronounced lifts in metrics related to brand differentiation, a key communication KPI for this brand. Other significant results include:

• The longest version of our short-form videos, at 30 seconds, saw a nearly 70% video completion rate.
• Our video ads outperformed all of our other social ad types with 54% higher ad recall and 59% higher CTR.
• The videos also outperformed our previous two social campaigns with a 500+% higher CTR.
• Our real stories featuring real guests generated millions of impressions via earned media, including features in trade publications such as MediaPost and Brandchannel.

Media