Renaissance Hotels is rooted in discovery and the spirit of the neighborhood. Every year, hotels around the world host a Global Day of Discovery event, which invites hotel guests and locals to take part in an engaging celebration that celebrates the neighborhood with curated discoveries and elevated evening experiences.
In 2023 (with the hotel and travel industry back in full swing), guests traveling for both business and leisure were looking for authentic local experiences. Capitalizing on this insight, Renaissance Hotels celebrated its 9th anniversary of Global Day of Discovery in May, featuring unscripted adventures that put the brand’s revamped Evenings at Renaissance program in the spotlight.
To showcase the one-of-a-kind experiences that Renaissance Hotels provides to travelers, we teamed up with a group of VFX creators and Cultural Curators from around the world to highlight the brand through a social-first lens.
Our overall objective of this campaign was to build awareness of Renaissance Hotels unique day-to-night discoveries and Evenings Programming available on Global Day of Discovery and beyond.
As the brand’s first activation since 2019, Global Day of Discovery in 2023 was a key moment for the brand to showcase its revamped Evenings programming and day-to-night discoveries. As such, the activation called for a mix of “big-box” names to help curate the events (cultural curators) as well as unique storytellers (VFX micro-influencers) to bring the brand to life on social media on the day and beyond.
VFX Influencers
We tapped 3 (micro) VFX creators with followings ranging from 4K-40K to experience Global Day of Discovery in New York, London, and Sao Paulo as well as a second stay later in the summer to experience Renaissance’s always on programming in Indian Wells, Porto Lapa, and Charleston.
To stand out in the travel content sea of sameness, we briefed the creators on leaning into Renaissance’s “look and look again” design pillar to demonstrate how the brand can transport a guest from day-to-night in an engaging way. This thumb-stopping editing technique was new to the brand and provided a unique POV on brand programs and experiences.
With each stay, creators delivered the following:
1x in-feed Instagram reel posted in collaboration with @renhotels
3x VFX-style videos for usage on brand channels
5x images for usage on brand channels
Cultural Curators
We partnered with cultural curators rooted in passion points of music, fashion, food, etc. to help curate Renaissance Hotels’ Global Day of Discovery programming and briefed them on creating content that showcased day-to-night discoveries at Renaissance. While cultural curators were an important piece of the campaign, specifically for the day-of activation, the micro-influencers/VFX content creators were the primary content source to help push brand messaging on social.
Amplification
Paid amplification across content primarily included whitelisted VFX content creator posts as well as dark posts using brand assets from VFX creators published via brand channels. While not contracted to, the VFX creators re-shared content (posted both on their own channels as well as any content published to the brand channel), further increasing reach of the content.
The campaign, which primarily focused on video content from the VFX micro-influencers, overall resulted in a statistically significant increase in brand lift (higher than the Travel Benchmark) and garnered the following:
19.5M paid impressions
1.16M paid engagements
892K paid video view-throughs with a 5.39% Video View Through Rate
Organically, the campaign was bolstered by the cultural curators who helped to drive reach and awareness for the brand, posting additional, value-add content and with contracted deliverables generating 100K organic reels plays. This was further supplemented by our VFX content creators, generating additional organic buzz with 100K+ reels plays, 1K+ post shares, 1.2K+ content saves and 5K+ post likes.
Content produced by the VFX creators was extremely well-received, demonstrated through the positive sentiment on their posts:
