• To raise awareness of Aloft Hotels as the hotel brand for music makers and music lovers
• To create influencer- and musician-led content that engages Aloft's self-expresser audience and communicates the brand's support of emerging music talent
• To create content with longevity that works across multiple digital platforms
In 2018 Aloft Hotels partnered with Universal Music Group to bring breakthrough talent to music cities around the world to inspire guests and fans, support emerging talent and encourage entries into a national talent search for emerging, unsigned artists to win a once-in-a-lifetime mentoring and recording prize with UMG.
We wanted to document the 2018 tour by creating "EMERGING," an engaging, original content series that shares with our community what it means to be emerging, see emerging and support emerging music. Each episode was centered around the musical talent and their journey as they emerged in the industry showing fans a new look at their story. Artists included Years & Years, Tank and The Bangas, Bea Miller, Stanaj and BANNERS.
To create an episodic feel for the series, as well as drive authenticity and reach, we needed an influential host. We found the perfect partner in Karli Henriquez. Karli is fanatical about music and technology, two of Aloft's passion points and is known for her genuine, down-to-earth persona. A versatile Latina in entertainment and tech, she is an exceptional representation of the possibilities that come to those who combine passion and persistent effort.
We filmed 5 episodes in 5 locations; Philadelphia, New Orleans, Asheville, San Jose Costa Rica and Denver. The episodes range from 3-4 minutes long and all feature Karli introducing the audience to the city, interviewing the artist with wit and charm and footage of their performance on the Aloft tour. We edited these down into 6 second cuts for Instagram stories, 15 second 'trailers' to be pushed out within Karli and the artists' social channels to drive their fans to the episodes and a series trailer. We dropped each episode on YouTube in real time as we progressed through the tour and then promoted them as a series once the tour was over.
Karli included behind-the-scenes filming content and episode teasers and trailers on her Instagram, which was mirrored by the Aloft brand Instagram to reach new audiences and engage our current one.
We added a banner to the music section of the Aloft Hotels website, where consumers are used to finding details of new music events, to drive people to the EMERGING series to find out what we get up to on the road!
The series was filmed in the colorful and energetic tone of the Aloft brand and showed our community our passion and support for emerging music via new platforms.
Results for 2019 were calculated by overall impressions, clicks, CTR, VCR, & CPCV, specifically for the EMERGING content that lived on YouTube. For Instagram & Facebook on the artist owned social media channels, results are measured by total impressions, engagements, and video views. For Instagram, Facebook, & Twitter on the @alofthotels owned social media channels, results are measured by organic impressions, hashtag mentions, and increase year over year.
EMERGING Results:
14,279,200 overall video impressions
28,784 clicks
0.20% CTR
Long form VCR: 3%
Short form VCR: 61%
Artist Social Media Results:
Total artist impressions: 7,314,240
Total artist engagements: 245,900
Total video views: 469,965
Aloft Hotels Owned Results:
Total Organic Impressions: 1.27M
#AloftLive mentions: 2,838
Overall +191% increase in visibility year over year
EMERGING exceed all projected results raising awareness of Aloft Hotels and engaging with a music maker and music lover audience. While this was our most successful year yet for Aloft Hotels based on performance KPIs, the real win was cultivating lasting artist and influencer relationships that will continue to drive value for our brand.
