Marketing Objectives:
Clearly state your marketing goals.
What did your company strive to achieve using this piece or program?Primary marketing objectives and goals for Best Western Arizona’s short form videos were to: - Drive hotel reservations to Best Western Arizona hotels - Develop a series of evergreen videos to be used across seasons, regions and audiences - Leverage innovative marketing strategies and techniques to connect with travelers across multiple touch points - Foster positive brand association with strong storytelling, differentiating Best Western from the competitive set - Showcase the breadth of activities and destinations throughout the state of Arizona

Target Audience:
Who was/is the target audience?
Characterize the composition, size, and location of your target audience.By covering a variety of activities and regions, Best Western targeted a wide variety of travelers and potential guests through the campaign. The target audiences for Best Western Arizona’s short form videos included: - Travelers seeking accommodations throughout the state of Arizona - Travelers who are active on social media and curate travel content while engaging in relevant conversations online - Activity and foodie travelers actively seeking travel inspiration - Solo and family leisure travelers with an interest in the Southwest - 30+ million Best Western Rewards members and Best Western brand loyalists - Arizona residents seeking to learn about and explore other regions of their home state

Research, Planning, and Implementation:
What market research was conducted prior to planning the piece/campaign?Arizona is a state full of distinct regions and diverse attractions to appeal to many travelers. From the towering pines of Flagstaff to Tucson’s sprawling desert, Best Western Arizona’s hotel owners recognized a video series would be best suited to showcase the state’s diversity. In addition, to produce footage that could be used throughout the year, and for years to come, it was crucial that every season was captured. To accommodate this, the videos were filmed in a multi-phase approach to capture proper seasonality. Key elements of the social media campaign’s videos included: - 15-second video shorts featuring film excerpts from around the state taken to produce eight short form videos used in targeted marketing opportunities. - Montage footage of specific activities and locations produced by combining new footage filmed in 2019 with additional existing footage from past video campaigns. - A paid media campaign designed to target niche audiences for specific areas and/or activities

Message:
What is the key message intended for the piece/campaign?
What differentiates your piece/campaign in the marketplace?The key message for this social campaign was, “Explore the Unexpected in Arizona,” and the various clips in each video served to reinforce this across the series. From showcasing the state’s natural beauty to highlighting unconventional Arizona activities such as winery tours, these clips inspired new audiences to consider Arizona as a travel destination. The series positions Best Western as a premier provider of accommodations in Arizona. Across brand managed channels, each video was paired with key brand messaging that promoted the comfort, value and amenities present at Best Western. The videos also provide opportunities for the co-op to feature seasonal promotional offers to encourage hotel reservations and properties that are new, renovated, historic, uniquely designed or those with impressive locations. With its simple but effective design, the series is an engaging and purposeful launching point for promoting travel throughout the state and building brand messaging.

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.Best Western reached goals on inspiring travelers to consider Arizona and the southwest United States as travel destinations, as well as driving direct bookings to the brand’s Arizona properties. The campaign successfully highlighted the natural beauty of Arizona and was received exceptionally well among the target audience. The campaign resulted in impressive engagement rates, achieving established goals and objectives. Results for the social media campaign include: - Supported Best Western Rewards 49% contribution of brand revenue fiscal year to date in 2019 - Contributed to 44,500+ gross reservations booked through bestwestern.com for the brand’s Spring promotion and 36,644+ gross reservations for the Summer promotion - Drove more than 5,070 site visits to bestwestern.com - Reached 145,303 unique users, building regional awareness of the brand - Garnered 12,174 total video views - 194,021 total impressions on Best Western’s Facebook and Instagram channels.

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 Arizona’s Short Form Videos

DivisionDigital Marketing

Sub-categoryDigital Single Item

CategoryVideo

Classification