Goals: Clearly state your marketing goals. What did you strive to achieve using this piece or program?
The Monaco Grand Prix is one of Formula One’s most classic events. While The Ritz-Carlton has no traditional hotel presence in Monaco, the race offered the brand an irresistible opportunity to create a one-of-a-kind experience with The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection, Marriott Bonvoy and the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team.
The event would pull together multiple elements to highlight The Ritz-Carlton in Monaco, create unforgettable celebrations, and offer a stunning example of how the brand leaves guests better than they arrived.
To establish a presence for the Grand Prix, The Ritz-Carlton looked to The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection — its vessel Evrima would create The Ritz-Carlton’s home away from home for the duration of the festivities, offering a standout setting fit for a city known for seaside extravagance, and giving guests and incredible view of the Monaco Street circuit.
Also keeping The Ritz-Carlton top of mind during race weekend would be a special tender boat, designed by The Ritz-Carlton Artist Partner Louis-Nicolas Darbon with an eye-catching livery that would be unmistakable as it shuttled guests to and from the city.
Monaco would also elevate awareness of the partnership between The Ritz-Carlton and Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team. In addition to The Ritz-Carlton having a conspicuous presence at anchor during the race weekend, members of the Mercedes Team would stay aboard Evrima. The ship would also be toured by driver George Russell, highlighting The Ritz-Carlton experience at sea through the perspective of one of the world's most famous athletes.
As the weekend approached its end, these strands of excitement and celebration would all come together for a perfect finale: a private concert from Grammy-winning artist John Legend, performing on the deck of Evrima in a concert that embodied the atmosphere of the escape.
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)
Social media coverage began with a continuation of The Ritz-Carlton Travel Poster Series, sharing an artful preview of the experience to come, followed by a look at Evrima inside and out as The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection made its way to Monaco.
After arrival, Instagram content highlighted the tender, revealing vibrant Ritz-Carlton branding with the coastal scenery.
On TikTok, content also shared a glimpse of the Tender experience - the first time The Ritz-Carlton used the platform in a tentpole partnership event.
Hero reels of George Russell's tour and John Legend's concert were shared on Instagram as collaboration posts with The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection, emphasizing their connection and reaching a wider audience. Posts shared by the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team extended and reframed experiences from the Grand Prix weekend, sharing key moments like George Russell's tour to a large audience from the team's unique perspective.
Beyond branded channels, the experiences aboard Evrima and the Grand Prix through a Ritz-Carlton lens were shared by guests and notables, including actor and brand partner Josh Hutcherson, generating earned media coverage for the event.
This campaign produced standout results, with content shared by Mercedes and promoted by The Ritz-Carlton particularly impactful. The Mercedes-AMG Petronas coverage of George Russell’s visit to Evrima earned a 15% VTR (view through rate), nearly doubling Marriott’s established benchmark, and exposing many viewers to our yacht experience with its 800k impressions.
The campaign was broadly successful as well. In addition to driving nearly 18 million total impressions, overall VTR achieved 8.76%, coming in above benchmarks. Click through rates were high as well — .94% easily beat established metrics of .53-.72% as the campaign drove over 30k clicks. Including Tiktok in our campaign strategy was also successful — its 10% VTR achieved platform benchmarks and drove an additional 938k impressions.
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?
We view a campaign as successful when it is performant in our preferred KPIs. By achieving or surpassing VTR and CTR benchmarks and driving a large volume of impressions, we know that our 2024 Monaco Grand Prix activation was a success. By creating standout experiences in an iconic setting, The Ritz-Carlton, The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection, Marriott Bonvoy and Mercedes-AMG F1 showed how travel leaves us better than we arrived in Monaco, and our strategy for sharing the event ensured a favorable ROI.
Entry Title
The Ritz-Carlton - Monaco Grand Prix with The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection
Division
Integrated Campaign - Experiential Marketing