With the opening of JW Marriott Crete Resort & Spa, JW Marriott marked a significant milestone: its first Mediterranean beach resort, set against the natural beauty of Crete’s coastline. Designed as a sanctuary of elevated calm, culinary excellence, and holistic well-being, this Greek island retreat provided a powerful new stage for the brand to bring its ethos to life—inviting guests to be fully present in mind, nourished in body, and revitalized in spirit.
To introduce the resort to a global luxury audience, JW Marriott leveraged an influencer-led storytelling strategy that brought the brand ethos to life through authentic, immersive experiences.
Objectives:
To announce the opening of JW Marriott Crete Resort & Spa, we executed an influencer strategy built around a phased storytelling approach designed to maximize impact across every stage.
We partnered with three creators—Ali Gordon (@aligordon), Victoria Garcia Martinez (@victo_somewhere), and Nigel Kabvina (@simplyni_)—selected for their natural alignment with the brand’s core pillars of wellness, joy, and culinary exploration. Together, they offered complementary perspectives that allowed the resort to be experienced through multiple lenses while maintaining a cohesive brand narrative. In addition, we had a photographer and videographer on-site to capture content that could be used to promote the property on our owned channels and included in our paid campaign.
The campaign launched with real-time storytelling from the influencers during their stay, bringing the resort’s distinct features to life through authentic, firsthand moments. This was followed by evergreen and paid content to sustain momentum, broaden reach, and support long-term consideration.
The strategy was executed in four phases:
This delivered strong performance across earned, owned, and paid channels, generating significant visibility and engagement throughout the campaign lifecycle.
From an earned perspective, the 89 creator posts drove a total of 2.19 million impressions, 40.6K engagements, and a 5.63% engagement rate, demonstrating the value of authentic, creator-led storytelling.
Of those posts, six collaborative posts published jointly with JW Marriott generated 225.8K impressions and 15.3K engagements. By tapping into each creator’s audience, these posts built excitement around the resort and achieved substantially higher engagement levels than typical, purely organic content. This illustrates the power of merging the credibility of these creators with the scale and visibility of our brand channels, maximizing impact while preserving authenticity.
Further amplifying impact, our paid campaign delivered 11.8 million impressions, 692.6K engagements, and a 1.18% CTR, exceeding Marriott benchmarks. The campaign also influenced our audience to book, driving $115K in attributable revenue, with posts on average achieving 28% higher AR than evergreen paid content. Brand lift study results underscored how well paid content resonated with our audiences, with this campaign exceeding industry benchmarks for Ad Recall by 220%, Consideration by 625%, and Favorability by 780%.
Earned, collaborative, and paid content worked in tandem to deliver engagement and visibility, establishing JW Marriott Crete Resort & Spa as a compelling new destination within the brand’s portfolio—and inspiring viewers to book their own stay.
