Marketing Objectives:
Clearly state your marketing goals.
What did your company strive to achieve using this piece or program?Primary marketing goals and objectives for Best Western’s 2019 FameBit campaign were to: - Deepen customer engagement and increase brand awareness with exciting influencer content - Leverage innovative influencer marketing strategies and techniques to connect with travelers across multiple touch points - Position Best Western as a leader in the hospitality industry through first-to-market, exclusive and innovative influencer partnerships and advertising opportunities - Maintain a strong presence during online travel planning by delivering highly relevant messaging to users to stay top of mind - Showcase Best Western’s modern amenities, loyalty benefits and rich promotions, each designed to meet the needs of today’s modern travelers - Drive registrations and bookings on bestwestern.com with a focus on Today’s Best Western messaging - Foster positive brand association with strong storytelling, differentiating Best Western from the competitive set

Target Audience:
Who was/is the target audience?
Characterize the composition, size, and location of your target audience.YouTube influencers created content focused on Best Western Rewards® and “Today’s Best Western: Every Guest Has a Journey” to share on their channels. This collaboration resulted in several styles of video content aimed at a diverse range of travelers, with themes including destination videos with incorporated hotel footage to travel and travel planning videos. The target audiences for Best Western’s 2019 FameBit campaign included: - Travelers who are active on social media and curate travel content while engaging in relevant conversations online - Various influencers’ loyal and dynamic fan bases - Family, pet-friendly, motorcycle and millennial travelers

Research, Planning, and Implementation:
What market research was conducted prior to planning the piece/campaign?Best Western sought to launch an influencer program that would complement its current influencer strategy while laddering into goals of brand building and storytelling, loyalty program growth and net new customer acquisition. This included reaching key high value audience pockets of family summer travelers, pet-friendly family travelers and competitive set hotel stayers. From this search, Best Western engaged in its innovative influencer partnership with YouTube’s FameBit. The program uses proprietary Google data to curate a customized list of creators to ensure the brand is reaching the right in-market audience. It also extended to Facebook and Instagram where users could further engage with the content. The campaign retargeted top users who engaged and watched the videos with branded Google Search ads and video cut-downs. With its unique approach to travel influencer marketing, this campaign solidifies Best Western’s place as an innovative, forward-thinking industry leader.

Message:
What is the key message intended for the piece/campaign?
What differentiates your piece/campaign in the marketplace?The FameBit campaign engaged top influencers with a multi-platform approach to communicate the message that Best Western is the perfect lodging for today’s modern traveler. Best Western was the first hotel advertiser to run with Google’s influencer program, and individual creators produced and shared content across YouTube and social profiles showcasing specific Best Western hotels and experiences. The content communicated the remarkable value guests, and particularly Best Western Rewards members, experience at each location with meaningful amenities that speak to the needs of today’s traveler, like hot breakfast and free Wi-Fi. Through a combination of genuine, entertaining native content and a scaled approach focused on relevance, Best Western resonated with new audiences of travelers and produced measurable success for the brand. This influencer campaign paired with Best Western messaging positioned the brand as a modern travel partner through authentic storytelling.

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 continues to adapt its influencer marketing strategy to authentically reach audiences outside of its followership. YouTube’s Famebit program showcased the power of influencer marketing with exponential increases in search lift, ad recall, and brand consideration which ultimately drives business objectives of bookings on bestwestern.com and sign ups for Best Western Rewards. It generated awareness and sparked conversations across relevant audiences by authentically integrating brand messaging into native content on YouTube. This campaign supported Best Western’s commitment to pushing the boundaries of digital marketing in the hospitality industry with the following results: -50% increase in consideration of Best Western travel accommodations -55% Ad Recall -674% Search Lift on YouTube -626% Search Lift on Google.com -1.85 million video views across 14 YouTube videos -11.6M watch time (minutes) -76K likes on social media -98/2.1 like to dislike ratio across video

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 FameBit Campaign

DivisionDigital Marketing

Sub-categoryDigital Marketing Series

CategoryMultimedia (Video, Flash, Animation) Series

Classification