Goals: Clearly state your marketing goals. What did you strive to achieve using this piece or program?
In summer 2024, The Ritz-Carlton embarked on the Road to Legendary. Driving from Vienna to Budapest with Mercedes-AMG, the Road to Legendary led a caravan of performance cars on a tour of European capitals, Ritz-Carlton hotels, and summer scenery — en route to a spectacular finish at the Hungarian Grand Prix and a meeting with Lewis Hamilton.
By creating this unique driving experience with Mercedes and our European hotels, we were able to share a roadside view of a thrilling journey, and communicate that the experiences of The Ritz-Carlton leave guests better than they arrived.
Overall goals:
- Highlight The Ritz-Carlton’s European hotels
- Amplify the partnership between The Ritz-Carlton and Mercedes
- Support and develop the new Ritz-Carlton Leave Better Campaign
- Use Artist Partner Louis-Nicolas Darbon and other creators on the trip to amplify coverage of the tour
Results: Which of your original goals did you achieve and how? How did you measure the effectiveness of the piece or campaign? Entrants should provide quantifiable results of their tactics or campaigns. (for example, click through rates or ad equivalency)
Guests began in the classic beauty of the Ritz-Carlton, Vienna, enjoying rooftop cocktails and an al fresco dinner in front of the hotel’s historic palace façade. The tour then proceeded through winding roads and summer scenery between Austria and Hungary, before crossing the Danube for an arrival at The Ritz-Carlton, Budapest, where guests made mocktails alongside Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 driver Lewis Hamilton before heading to the Hungaroring for the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Cars on the Road to Legendary were made to stand out, each featuring custom liveries designed by The Ritz-Carlton Artist Partner Louis-Nicolas Darbon with bright colors and Ritz-Carlton logos adding to the iconic design and badging of Mercedes-AMG.
The Ritz-Carlton presented the Road to Legendary on social primarily via Instagram, using reels, carousels and stories to explore the details, iconic destinations, and incredible cars making the journey. Debuting the event as a collaboration post with Mercedes-AMG boosted engagement and connected with a larger audience.
The story continued with Instagram Stories and posts from Louis-Nicolas Darbon and other members of the tour, allowing the adventure to be experience from multiple angles on social.
High level results:
· 47M+ potential reach
· 1.1M video views across The Ritz-Carlton, Mercedes-AMG, Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1, and Louis-Nicolas Darbon pages
· 115+ pieces of content driving PR, social, digital, and experiential marketing
The campaign’s top-performing asset was our Hero reel featuring Lewis Hamilton and an overview of the experience, surpassing benchmarks with Video Thruplay Rate KPI of 8.84%. This asset also significantly outperformed evergreen-focused reels in terms of views, reflecting an interest in our audience for the star power and elevated moments the Road to Legendary provided. Similarly, our collaboration reel with Mercedes-AMG produced a quarter-high result for like and comments and reel.
Return on Investment: How much revenue has the piece or campaign generated and how does this compare to your goal? What was the return on investment?
By reaching our goals by creatively utilizing our Mercedes partnership and building awareness, we consider this campaign to be a success in terms of ROI, strengthened by our hero assets achieving notable metrics in terms of our overall brand content.
Launching high profile activations with our partners is an important part of showing, and not just telling, how The Ritz-Carlton inspires transformational travel and leaves guests better than they arrived, making events like The Road to Legendary an important part of our content strategy going into the future.
Entry Title
The Ritz-Carlton - The Road to Legendary
Division
Digital - Social Media Campaign