Objectives

For more than four decades, Super 8  by Wyndham – one of the world’s largest economy hotel brands with more than 2,700 hotels globally – has served as a trusted and convenient companion on the road.  With redesigned rooms, local black-and-white photography, free WiFi, and convenient locations off major highways, you can depend on us to leave you refueled and ready for the day ahead. With road trips at an all-time high during the pandemic and Super 8 being the iconic road trip hotel, the goal was to capitalize on pent-up travel demand from an authentic road tripper’s perspective in a way that appeals to younger audiences.

The marketing goals were:

• Generate consideration for the brand that will resonate with the next generation of travelers in an authentic way.
• Position Super 8 as your ultimate companion on the road highlighting our hotels as dependable places to rest up.
• Partner with three micro-influencers across the U.S. and Canada that have a passion for road-tripping.
• Grow social engagement and help drive traffic to the brand website.

Strategy and Execution

The next generation traveler, Millennials and Gen Zers, are fueling recovery and they are plugged in and social-media savvy with 80% planning their trips online (PhocusWire, July 2021). With the rise of the ‘creator economy’ we also know that people trust people. Seventy-four percent say that user-generated content has more impact on their booking decisions and companies report that it generates 4x higher click-through rates and 28% higher engagement (Tint, 2020).

What better way to show off an authentic road trip than from the next generation themselves? We saw an opportunity to reach this audience with authentic bite-sized video content, so we enlisted three micro-influencers in order to create an 8-second video showing off their own road trip - @readysetpto, @arctictumbleweed, and @carlymotoadv. The Super 8-Second Road Trip social campaign successfully launched from October 4 – December 4, 2021 across our social channels, Facebook and Instagram, showcasing routes in South Dakota, Connecticut and Ontario, Canada. This quick, action packed social series features a unique road trip showing off local attractions and a stop at Super 8 along the way. In addition, each micro-influencer posted content on their social channels as a paid partnership post to garner engagement from their followers.

Results

Our social campaign effectiveness and success was measured by social impressions, video views, engagement, and website traffic. The results of our campaign are as follows:

• Garnered 799K impressions and 94K video views.
• Engagement rate of 10.13% which was 5% above benchmark.
• Overall, drove 30K link clicks with a 12.01% click-through-rate, exceeding benchmark by over 10x.

We also saw positive engagement on our micro-influencer channels with comments from their followers:

• “From a South Dakota girl…your pointers and pictures are on point!! Love that you enjoyed the beautiful Black Hills!!!”
• “Wow!! This is so amazing- what a spectacular partnership that showcases an amazing long standing company and gives access to more and more people who are traveling across, up, down and all around the states! Cant wait to hear more!!”
• “This post changed my view of Super 8s! Can’t wait to experience my next stay there.”

Media