Vol 39. W Hotels: Cozying up to influencers 🛏️

Most luxury hotel brands advertise by leaning into the big attractions within their cities—the landmarks, the food, the elements that make you want to travel there.

That’s why it was surprising when W Hotels launched an influencer marketing campaign that doesn’t use any of that as the focal point. Sure, there are some brief snippets from the city and the sights, but the main focus is on the influencers… in bed.

This week, Case Studied explores how W Hotels elevated brand awareness and consideration by getting intimate with influencers.

But first…. Join 100’s of CMOs from 9-figure brands that use Case Studied to source better agency partners.

Running a marketing team effectively is exhausting. That is why CMOs from the world’s top brands only trust Case Studied to match them with the perfect agency and save 20+ hours running the searches themselves.

Come see why Case Studied readers from Shopify, Microsoft, Magic Spoon, Spotify and more come to us to find new agency partners for Performance Marketing, SEO, PR, Creative & more.

Claim your free agency recommendation list by hopping a quick 15-minute call.

_Promoted

The Brief:

W Hotels was founded in 1998 by the industry giant Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide. Since Marriott’s acquisition of Starwood in 2016, the hotel chain has operated alongside brands like The Ritz-Carlton and St. Regis in Marriott’s luxury brand portfolio. 

The W currently brings its high-end, artsy vibes to over 65 hotels in more than 30 countries. And just like every other hotel chain, the W took a hit during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

But with strong rebounds coming in 2021 and 2022, W Hotels was focused on building momentum and breaking through the noise in 2023. 

Their main KPI was to increase brand awareness and consideration. To do that, W Hotels started with data. Specifically, the brand informed its campaign ideation with three key insights:

🎤 Talent-based video performed best among their audience

🤳56% of users and 67% of creators feel closer to brands when they post unpolished, human-centric content. 

😯Unexpected influencer and celebrity interviews were stopping viewers mid-scroll 

Fueled by this data, W Hotels launched a new content franchise.

The Execution:

With their agency partner Farrynheight, W Hotels created “Pillow Talk”—a social-first video series featuring influencer and celebrity talent in the comfort of different W Hotel beds around the world. 

Each video is shot in interview style, personalized to the talent. In Kristen Kish’s video in W Koh Samui, she talks about travel habits and the experiences the hotel recommended to her. In Tefi Pessoa’s talk at W Rome, she discusses being single in a romantic city and the hotel’s astrological sign. 

LP Giobbi’s video at W Ibiza was shot during the DJ’s “late night snack,” whereas Noah Beck’s was shot over breakfast at W London.  

The videos aren’t particularly formulaic, but the one element that’s consistent across the series is unpolished snippets—a conversation or two with someone off camera, a blooper. Something that makes the talent (and the energy of the video) feel more human. 

It’s a unique approach to luxury brand promotion, which can often be highly aspirational. As the brand put it, “We evoke emotion over exclusivity. We lean on personality over prestige. Instead of being explicit in communicating who we are, we align ourselves with high-reaching talent who embody W Hotels as a brand and let them do the talking.”

The Results:

The Pillow Talk series racked up over 15 million impressions across Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook combined. It had an average engagement rate of 9% (well above the industry standard of 2%), but most importantly, it delivered on W Hotel’s main KPIs—Pillow Talk contributed to shifting brand awareness by 4.4 points and consideration by 2.5 points. 

The series is now a regularly occurring segment on the brand’s social media channels, with recent guests including globetrotting DJs Gioli and Assia, and the actor, dancer, singer, and songwriter Keiynan Lonsdale. The series was a finalist in the Annual Shorty Awards and it won Platinum in the MUSE Creative Awards for the Branded Content Travel and Tourism category.

The Takeaways:

The W’s Pillow Talk campaign is a prime example of successful influencer marketing. Here are a few specific learnings:

1. Brands need to find their unique POV

Content marketing is the foundation of a modern marketing strategy, the challenge is developing content that feels native to your brand and authentically tells stories that do the job of making consumers feel a certain way about your brand and products.

The key is finding that point of view, without it being overly “salesy”. The true success of the W Hotels campaign is it manages to bring the viewer into their hotels naturally, leaving the creators to narrate and engage them. By letting influencers tell stories about how they like to see the world, W Hotels is positioning themselves as the destination for content about travelling and interesting people.

2. Influencer works when it’s natural

If you turn on your TV and see a random celebrity endorsing their 5th product this year (no offense, Shaq), it’s pretty obvious that this is all the work of some big marketing campaign. There is nothing wrong with that, however given that most brands don’t have millions to spend on gigantic celebrities, to truly nail your creator campaigns, you need to find voices that align with your brand, can drive engagement to your ad and increase trust in your business.

By identifying micro-influencers with strong followings built around them, all of whom enjoy travel, W Hotels was able to attract a new audience and build a campaign that was successful without the need for some major celebrity.

3. Omnichannel distribution is a must

Like any good campaign, you need to build a media plan that expands your reach across multiple platforms. Whether it is an entirely digital campaign or a combination of offline and online, you need to develop a content strategy that can effectively translate to multiple channels.

In the case of the W Hotels campaign, they focused on distribution across YouTube as well as Facebook and Instagram, to ensure they were reaching a wider audience and also leveraging where the creators had built-in followings themselves.

When developing your next campaign, make sure to edit your content to fit different screen sizes and lengths to make it more appealing across a variety of formats such as YouTube, Instagram, Shorts, Reels, TikToks and whatever is likely to emerge next.

ICYMI:

Missed the last few volumes of Case Studied, we’ve got you covered.

Last week we dove into Robinhood’s launch strategy, leveraging a gamified referral program to generate signups a whole year before going live.

Real talk: Working with agency partners comes with a long list of benefits. And it takes just a short time to find one with Vendry. They’ll match you with vetted agency partners within seven days, for free. See for yourself.