Marketing Objectives:
Clearly state your marketing goals.
What did your company strive to achieve using this piece or program?By creating an integrated video strategy, Best Western sought to reach today’s modern travelers in an engaging medium across traditional and non-traditional platforms. The brand’s marketing goals for the campaign were: - Increase ad recall and brand consideration in key audience segments - Drive Best Western Rewards membership registrations - Deepen customer engagement and increase brand awareness with exciting video content - Maintain a strong presence during online travel planning by delivering highly relevant messaging to users to stay top of mind - Leverage engaging video content to drive purchase intent and bookings through bestwestern.com - Showcase Best Western’s modern amenities, loyalty benefits and rich promotions, each designed to meet the needs of today’s modern travelers - Establish the brand as an innovative, forward-thinking industry leader

Target Audience:
Who was/is the target audience?
Characterize the composition, size, and location of your target audience.With its diverse range of platforms and content developed to speak to each platform’s demographic, the primary audience for the integrated video strategy was today’s travelers – a broad term used to describe modern guests who demand more from hospitality brands than ever before, seeking authenticity, elevated amenities and superior service for a variety of budgets and travel occasions. Today’s travelers set the higher standard that the brand’s global transformation into Today’s Best Western has aimed to please. Additional target audiences for Best Western’s Integrated Video Strategy include: - AAA, CAA and AARP members who are eligible for Best Western’s partner discounts - Budget-minded travelers who are interested in loyalty redemption opportunities - 30+ million Best Western Rewards members and Best Western brand loyalists - Travelers who are active online and make travel decisions for their household

Research, Planning, and Implementation:
What market research was conducted prior to planning the piece/campaign?As consumers’ viewing habits continue to evolve, Best Western sought to develop an integrated video strategy that would both utilize linear TV to help “fill the funnel” during promotional periods while extending the reach of the linear campaign against cord cutters and light TV viewers in the US and Canada. The brand built its multi-platform approach with these goals in mind. Linear TV drove awareness against the core audience of adults aged 25-54. The screen agnostic approach ensured cross-screen reach, and Google Preferred served as a new avenue designed to engage untapped audiences for the brand. Best Western used strategic targeting tactics to identify high-value audiences and amplified its message by leveraging the diverse platform mix to extend reach, resulting in measurable success for Best Western and positioning the brand as an industry leader among its competitors.

Message:
What is the key message intended for the piece/campaign?
What differentiates your piece/campaign in the marketplace?The integrated video strategy communicated the message that Today’s Best Western is a variety of hotel brands with modern offerings for today’s modern travelers. Across each platform, the content showcased the remarkable value guests, and particularly Best Western Rewards members, experience at each location. Through a calculated combination of platforms and messages designed to drive awareness against the core audience of adults aged 25-54, expand reach and engage audiences, Best Western served to reinforce its position as a modern travel partner. The song, “Best Day of My Life” which has been present across Best Western advertising for some time, was the connective tissue among all creative across social, digital and OTT, allowing different and varied visuals to best speak to each platform’s audience. This created opportunity to explore creative that was relevant and authentic to today’s travelers, while maintaining one voice across the campaign.

Results:
How did you measure the effectiveness of your efforts and what direct and tangible results did you achieve? Please be as specific as possible and share the full impact of your efforts in CSR. Understandably, maintenance is another major part of CSR. If you have continued to actively and consistently work on your CSR process; please add those actions to your results description.

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.As part of the brand’s loyalty strategy, the integrated video strategy supported Best Western Rewards 49% contribution of brand revenue fiscal year to date in 2019. These results demonstrate that the brand’s spring campaign helped to improve the brand’s overall bottom line while also attracting loyal customers. Best Western’s integrated video strategy was highly successful, delivering the following results: - Summer produced more than 24 million impressions from OTT and CTV platforms - Spring produced more than 15 million impressions from OTT and CTV platforms - Producing a combined +180 million digital video impressions - The Amazon Fire TV homepage banner to video is performing 8% better YOY and at 99.8% VCR is above current benchmark of 97% - TripAdvisor produced 359k+ interactions totaling to over 80k+ minutes spent interacting with the 360 videos over the 5-month flight. - The Disney summer partnership delivered over 2.1 million video starts and 241k+ completed views to date.

Research, Planning and Implementation
What research was conducted prior to planning the initiative? Describe the step by step efforts to plan and implement the initiative in a way that would allow others to be able to duplicate your efforts. Were their individuals or teams that offered leadership to ensure effectiveness?

Message and Communication
What were your key messages? How did you differentiate your messages? What was the purpose of the communications? How did you communicate your actions to the target audience? What other stakeholders or media did you approach for assistance?

Results and Impact
What results had the greatest impact on your target audience? What results were directly tied to the HSMAI Foundation Mission? Which of your original goals was achieved? Please comment on the process and the outcomes. What measures were used to determine success? How was the data collected? What is the status of the initiative now – will it continue? Was it effective? Will it be used continuously? Will you help others use the initiative to help the industry meet its needs for exceptional talent? How?

Message:
What is the key messages intended for the piece/ campaign?
What differentiates your piece/campaign in the marketplace?
What helped you breakthrough on mobile?

Results:
What original goals did you achieve and how?
How did you measure the effectiveness of the piece or campaign?
Entrants should provide quantifiable metrics tied to real business results (eg brand lift, leads, or bookings generated).

Project Analysis:
Please provide a brief background on the project and your efforts to preserve the destination’s natural, cultural and historic heritage.

Objectives and Goals:
What did organization set out to achieve in undertaking this project?

Creativity and Innovation:
What new and innovative ideas did you incorporate in either your method of outreach or in the implementation of the project that you think could inspire others committed to sustainability in the tourism and travel industry?

Communication:
How did you communicate your actions to the public, the media and other key stakeholders and what was the aim of the message?
How did you generate publicity in order to build awareness of, or support corporate values on your sustainability initiatives.

Results:
How did you measure the effectiveness of your efforts and what direct and tangible results did you achieve?

Leadership:
Please list the individual in a leadership role responsible for the project and how would you characterize their commitment to promoting preservation and sustainability best practices in the travel and tourism industry?

Entry TitleBest Western’s Integrated Video Strategy

DivisionDigital Marketing

Sub-categoryDigital Campaign

CategoryIntegrated Market Campaign for Consumers (B2C)

Classification