Marketing Objectives:
Clearly state your marketing goals.
What did your company strive to achieve using this piece or program?
In launching its “Behind the Brands” series, Best Western sought to continue shifting perception and educating the travel industry on what Today’s Best Western is all about. Core objectives were to:
• Position the company as a continuous innovator, highlighting its diverse brand portfolio with fresh offerings for developers and concepts in nearly every chain scale;
• Raise visibility for each of Best Western’s 11 unique brands, emphasizing the company’s evolution and innovation while emphasizing the brands’ unique personalities; and
• Highlight the way Best Western has modernized itself from the inside out, refining its existing brands and creating new brands that appeal to both today’s travelers and owners/developers.
Target Audience:
Who was/is the target audience?
Characterize the composition, size, and location of your target audience.
The target audience for the initial Behind the Brands series push was the travel trade, targeting industry professionals who may still be unaware of the impact of the brand refresh, and the various options available to them as part of Today’s Best Western.
Research, Planning, and Implementation:
What market research was conducted prior to planning the piece/campaign? Describe how you planned and produced the creative asseets with the mobile canvas in mind.
Today’s Best Western is a company that has emerged from an incredible transformation, diversifying its distinctive brand portfolio, increasing scale across the globe, implementing new technology initiatives and enhancing its already award-winning loyalty program to stay ahead of the game. The company’s communications team, however, realized that an opportunity still existed to shift mindshare and perception, utilizing a creatively packaged PR and social media campaign that would be fun, insightful and educational. As part of the new Behind the Brands series, the team put together a pitch that would first, before going out to consumers, amplify the key messages of Today’s Best Western to those within the industry.
Message:
What is the key message intended for the piece/campaign?
What differentiates your piece/campaign in the marketplace?
• Today’s Best Western has a new look, feel and appeal for developers as well as travelers, on the heels of a successful, award-winning brand refresh. The 72-year-old company is today an evolved, contemporary, relevant brand that has adapted to continue meeting and exceeding the needs of today’s travelers.
• Best Western is going “Behind the Brands” in 2018, diving deep into each of its 11 distinctive brands to showcase just how transformative the company’s brand refresh has been. Each of these brands has its own unique personality, and offers modern, value-driven amenities with a fresh design and innovative technologies.
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.
The Behind the Brands series has been a resounding success. So far, Best Western Premier®, Best Western®, BW Signature Collection® by Best Western, BW Premier Collection® by Best Western, Executive Residency by Best Western® and Vib® have been featured. The program has been covered in leading trade publications – with an expansive Travel Pulse feature followed by Hotelier Magazine, HospitalityNet.org, Lodging, Hotel Business and 30+ others, generating 1.5 million trade impressions. Social media campaigns have seen 1.2 million impressions, 65,000 engagements, influencer content reaching 1.3 million users and 628,000 video views. The company continues to thrive, welcoming new developers and travelers into the fold. The brand’s pipeline includes 337 properties across North America, divided between the 11 brands. After 72 years, Today’s Best Western is clearly a fresh, modern player with a new structure, personality and brands in place that not only follow trends, but help create them.
Category
MARKETING PROGRAM - Trade
Entry Title
Going “Behind the Brands” with Today’s Best Western
Situational Analysis
In 2015, Best Western® Hotels & Resorts launched a revolutionary brand refresh, restructuring its system and emerging as an innovative player keeping pace with the evolving needs of today’s travelers while bringing new concepts to the market for hotel owners. The refresh has earned industry-wide acclaim, solidifying Best Western’s place as a contemporary, modern, innovative brand.
Heading into 2018, Best Western saw that while the refresh was a success on many levels, a gap remained in overall brand perception. Now was the time to elevate exposure for the refresh, raising visibility for Best Western’s new look and feel. The team launched a year-long “Behind the Brands” series - a programmatic calendar of press releases, pitches and content showcasing one of the company’s distinctive 11 brands each month. With before and after photos, commentary from leadership, videos, social media programming and more, the campaign revolved around a simple message - “Today’s Best Western.”