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Special Project

Special Project
From the 8th Annual Shorty Awards

#LookBack15

Entered in Hospitality

Objectives

MGM Resorts International created a company-wide campaign to encourage fan engagement across all 15 of our casino/resort brands to promote and celebrate the final countdown of 2015. We sought to foster a conversation across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter by encouraging users to share their own #LookBack15 content and reflect on their most memorable moments of 2015. Through this engagement, we sought to raise awareness of the MGM Resorts International parent brand and build an audience to re-target with a follow-up campaign in Q1 2016 for all of our additional 14 brands, such as Bellagio, MGM Grand Las Vegas and Luxor. By leveraging in-house creative resources, we created the most engaging and imaginative content in the history of MGM Resorts to showcase powerful and relevant highlights of 2015.

Strategy and Execution

Launching with a Facebook teaser video on December 23, 2015, accompanied by graphic treatments on Instagram and Twitter, the #LookBack15 campaign sought to create an emotional connection with our audiences. We wanted to celebrate and memorialize 2015 with them.

Over the next eight days, we launched a series of 15 videos and custom graphics across all of our channels and brands highlighting momentous events, both within our company, such as the building of the new T-Mobile Arena, as well as the larger societal realm, such as marriage equality. In order to extend our reach beyond our pages, we boosted our teaser video on Facebook and also leveraged a Buzzfeed listicle entitled "14 People Share Their Best Social Media Moments From The Past Year," which further encouraged readers to share their own moments using #LookBack15.

These creative pieces of content were then shared strategically, based on brand relevance and appropriate flighting, across our owned pages on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram throughout the last two weeks of 2015, until our campaign ended at midnight on December 31, 2015.

Results

The #LookBack15 campaign garnered more than 8 million impressions on Facebook with more than 1 million engagements. Our most successful post from this campaign, a hyperlapse video of the T-Mobile Arena's construction, amassed the most engagements of any MGM Resorts International Facebook post in 2015.

On Twitter, the campaign generated potential reach (number of followers at the time of the tweet plus the followers of the accounts who retweeted content) of more than 14 million. Additionally, the campaign hashtag trended on Twitter multiple times throughout the campaign flight, at one point for more than 22 hours straight. We were able to break through the clutter of much more generic hashtags like #MondayMotivation and #NYE2016.

Our sponsored listicle on Buzzfeed had more than 103,000 views.

Additionally, this campaign added in raising awareness of the MGM Resorts International brand as the parent of the top resorts in Las Vegas. Engagements related to #LookBack15 content accounted for 21% of organic engagement on Facebook for all of 2015 and 3% of organic engagement on Twitter for all of 2015 for this brand. This engagement led to a nearly 3% growth in fans over just a 9 day period.

Finally, our campaign was so successful that the #LookBack15 hashtag transcended our brand and our audiences, as other Las Vegas brands joined the conversation, including Tropicana Las Vegas, a competitor.

Media

Video for #LookBack15

Entrant Company / Organization Name

MGM Resorts International

Links

Entry Credits