The W Hotels brand is known for its bold and dynamic social media presence. In 2022, we relaunched our social media to reflect the brand's updated image and focus. This process involved collaboration between the global brand team, hotels worldwide, content creators, and influencers.
As we sought opportunities to amplify our updated social media, we partnered with Architectural Digest on a new video series called “Suite Talk.” Over a series of four videos, we interviewed cultural tastemakers like Michaela Jae Rodriguez, Simi & Haze, Kimberly Drew, and Tokimonsta at hotels from W Nashville to W Montreal.
When strategizing our social media relaunch, we focused on five key initiatives: creating a new content strategy, modernizing our look and feel, shooting new content across the globe, testing new content formats to reflect a changing social landscape, and working with new partners and tastemakers that reflect our target consumer.
As we planned for this relaunch, we wanted to find a media partner that shared our passions for travel, design, and personality-driven video content. Working with Architectural Digest was the perfect opportunity.
From there, we envisioned a video series with influential personalities that highlighted the uniqueness of various W Hotels properties. With these inputs, Suite Life, a YouTube series that interviews tastemakers about all things travel while showcasing the design of our hotels, was born.
We partnered with Architectural Digest to feature talent that shared our passion points and to identify locations that highlighted the unique W Hotels design aesthetic. Through this series, we interviewed award-winning actress and activist Michaela Jae Rodriguez at W South Beach, DJ duo and beauty gurus Simi & Haze at W Nashville, curator and writer Kimberly Drew at W Montréal, and DJ and producer Tokimonsta at W Aspen.
The result is a travel series that balances humor, heart, design, and inspiration. Viewers both can feel like they are touring suites at our hotels while engaging in intimate conversations with Michaela, Simi, Haze, Kimberly, and Tokimonsta, sharing their accounts of Emmy nominations, DJ sets on the road, mezcal cocktails, and travel hacks.
We launched this series across Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter– a combination of our owned channels, as well as Architectural Digest and talent channels– running a paid media campaign across all platforms to reach our target audience.
To date, Suite Talk has amassed 3.2M Youtube views, 3.4M impressions across W and talent social channels, 64k owned engagements, an engagement rate of 29%, a 45% increase in engagement compared to other campaigns, and coverage in Architectural Digest.
The success of this series has inspired us to continue producing YouTube content and to create more personality-driven interview series for YouTube and Instagram, including Local Check-In, a series interviewing hotel partners across the globe, and Sound Check, a series interviewing our musical partners as they perform. Our brand channels now share unique perspectives on travel through connectors and tastemakers in the W Hotels community.
