The overarching campaign objective was to create a content series for SpringHill Suites by Marriott that highlighted some of the brand's most interesting cities, properties & guest experiences – all while promoting the brand's dedication to "A Little Extra, A Lot Less Ordinary". Ultimately, through this approach the brand aimed to increase likelihood to consider a stay at the SpringHill Suites by Marriott & increase brand affinity.
Through branded content, SpringHill Suites wanted to leverage authentic voices in travel (through Tastemade & social influencers), to drive consideration & increase visits.
| To drive consideration for SpringHill Suites, while highlighting the brand's "Little Extras" messaging, Tastemade tapped into its talent & social best practices to create a custom content series for the brand – "Beyond The Expected". In this series, we leveraged seasoned travel Tastemakers to show viewers how to find inspiration from unexpected places through insider spots only local knows about. Within each episode, Tastemade highlighted SpringHill Suites as THE hotel that provides "little extras" to make your trip that much more enjoyable. The brand's "Little Extras" include spacious suites, West Elm décor, free premium breakfast, craft beers/wine/snacks from our 24-hour market, in-suite work spaces, fitness center, free Wi-Fi, and mobile check-in. To create a successful branded content strategy, we took Tastemade Travel's high performing social formats & customized them to reach SpringHill Suites' marketing objectives. What made this program so unique was that we combined these formats with insights from Tastemade's proprietary data engine to inform trends & destinations we should be focusing on, ensuring high viewership & engagement. We then tapped into Tastemade's extensive talent pool – finding influencers that not only embodied the SpringHill Suites brand, but who could be an authentic voice for travel inspiration. Lastly, we combined all of this to create a true 360° social campaign – optimizing all the creative for multiple social channels – Facebook Feed, Instagram Feed & Instagram Stories. These were distributed across Tastemade's channels, as well as on our talent's channels & SpringHill Suites' O&O. Each piece of creative was strategically optimized to fit the viewing consumption habits of each specific channel. |
The approach was deemed extremely successful in increasing consideration & brand affinity for SpringHill Suites by Marriott, which we were able to prove with the help of a Nielsen Brand Study. The campaign scored +14% higher on visit intent & +12% higher on brand affinity than the norm – proving that our story-telling approach truly engaged our audience.
We also saw that the series over-delivered on views by 123%, highlighting that we created compelling content that travelers were craving. Lastly, we saw a 160% increase in tag rate, showcasing the viral & shareable nature of the series.
