Element Hotels, a Marriott International brand, set out to raise awareness of the fully equipped in-room kitchens offered in its hotels globally and reinforce the brand's positioning as a longer stay hospitality brand that encourages you to maintain your health and wellness routine while traveling.
The Stay in Your Element video series launched as a content collaboration with Bon Appétit Magazine to highlight the versatility and convenience of the fully equipped in-room kitchen offering in its new industry-leading Studio Commons room concept. The 3-part video series showcased the playful personality of Bon Appétit’s star Food Director, Carla Music, who turned Element Hotels into a test kitchen to create 3 unique recipes that are nourishing and easy to recreate while on the road and make your stay at Element Hotels feel like home.
The branded content strategy focused on a few core objectives:
-Generate awareness for Element Hotels and its offering of fully equipped in-room kitchens that help you maintain your wellness routine while traveling
-Create social-first assets that would generate engagement within the Bon Appétit and Element Hotels social communities
-Strategically leverage content partners and culinary talent to maximize messaging reach in conjunction with a widely distributed paid social and display advertising campaign
It’s no secret that culinary content is having its moment in the social media spotlight right now, inspiring us all with pro chefs and home chefs alike. Our challenge was to find the perfect recipe (pun intended) for content, conversation, channels, and cultural relevance to help drive awareness for Element Hotels and its unique offerings that make it feel like your home away from home.
With limited marketing resources and modest brand awareness, Element Hotels focused its efforts on aligning with a partner with a common moral compass, mass distribution, expertise in content development, and access to viral talent. Element tapped into the Bon Appétit Magazine’s fanatical audience to take their trending Test Kitchen videos and drop them into a new environment: our hotels. A few key considerations in strategizing this campaign were:
Partnership
In strategizing how to market the brand’s unique in-room kitchen offering, Element Hotels had to find a multi-disciplinary publishing partner that checked many boxes; Bon Appétit did just that, offering massive reach, access to star talent and content production, and, most importantly, alignment of brand core values.
Content Strategy
After identifying a perfect-fit partner, we set out to create a thumb-stopping video series that sat at the intersection of cultural relevance and our combined core values. With a knack for creating viral videos with a cult-following, our concept was to tap into Bon Appétit’s pool of internet famous chefs and set them up in Element Hotels’ fully equipped in-room kitchen, as opposed to their usual BA test kitchen, to develop healthful recipes that you can make while traveling.
Star Talent
The videos would star Bon Appétit’s Food Director, chef Carla Music, whose sunny disposition mirrors Element Hotels’ brand ethos. She developed 3 custom recipes, one for a snack, lunch, and dinner, respectively, that you can make while staying at an Element Hotel using tools found in your in-room kitchen. On screen, Carla would prep and cook each recipe in a dedicated video, while providing the viewer with culinary tips, tricks, and travel anecdotes. The result was 3 2-minute videos, each highlighting the versatility of the kitchen and the contagiously amiable personality of Carla.
Multi-Channel Distribution
In an effort to maximize the robust touchpoints of the partnership, we ideated a multi-channel distribution plan to appeal to both Bon Appétit fans and Element Hotels fans: the custom 3-part long form video series was supplemented with short form video and photo ancillary content which debuted across owned, talent, and paid social channels, as well as a dedicated landing page and display advertising takeover on Bon Appétit’s website and downloadable recipe cards.
Timing
The campaign and content series launched with a choreographed multi-channel debut on Thanksgiving Day across owned, partner, and talent social and digital channels, capitalizing on Bon Appétit’s amplified web traffic and engagement during the biggest food holiday of the year.
As a result of thoughtfully concepted social-first video series and strategic cross-promotion from partners, Element Hotels saw an increased engagement on the branded content series:
4.3M total impressions (+65% above guaranteed impressions)
19.62% average video completion rate (1.32x above partner benchmark)
557K total social media engagements
