In the summer of 2018, fashion illustrator Meagan Morrison of @TravelWriteDraw partnered with The Ritz-Carlton and The Steven Kent Winery for a tour through various Ritz-Carlton destinations throughout California: Rancho Mirage, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, and Half Moon Bay. "The California Inspiration Tour" was a journey in search of defining moments that would inspire Meagan Morrison to create art for exclusive Ritz-Carlton wine labels from California's Steven Kent Winery, available in domestic Ritz-Carlton Club Lounges.
This collaboration was the first of its kind for The Ritz-Carlton, allowing us to explore the relationship of art and travel, and how they work together to tell a beautiful story.
The objectives were to increase brand awareness of the tour through by sharing in real time across all brand channels and to build excitement around our first partnership with Fashion Illustrator, Meagan Morrison.
The California Inspiration Tour was a new type of partnership for The Ritz-Carlton. The introduction of this collaboration required clear strategic direction. Our strategy focused on the fusion of art and how it can work on social to tell a story. Editorialized Instagram Stories were used as the main anchor of the campaign, linking everything back to our story highlight. We had a clear channel by channel strategy for how each asset was produced and implemented. Our chapter-based model curated destination experiences and amplified #RCMemories from our partner and influencer, @TravelWriteDraw.
To target users that may not have been following along on our summer tour and to celebrate the exciting unveiling of the wine labels we crafted an Instagram carousel that featured best in class social assets produced during the tour. This traffic ad was the first of its kind for The Ritz-Carlton, because it linked off to the Instagram Story highlight in order to attract additional views.
The California Inspiration Tour with Meagan Morrison was a huge success both organically and in our paid strategy. Throughout the tour we generated over 1.7 million organic impressions.
Our Instagram Carousel, which linked to our Instagram Story highlight of our California tour generated over 5 million impressions and 95 thousand engagements. Our carousel generated over 6 thousand clicks to the stories highlight and although Instagram only allows accounts to review impressions for 24 hours this data highlights that our followers were engaged and eager to learn more about The California Inspiration tour.
The Facebook traffic ad for The California Inspiration Tour linked off to the article "Brush with Varietals" on Journey into The Ritz-Carlton. This unique traffic ad produced over 11,000 link clicks to the article. This impressive number of clicks, although a secondary KPI, added to the overall success of our multi-platform campaign.
