Embassy Suites Hotels Hijacks Consumer Passions To Cultivate Online Community

Challenge

In 2010, Embassy Suites Hotels had conducted a highly successful sweepstakes program on Facebook, increasing its fan base from 3,000 to 34,000. To keep the momentum going, Emanate was tasked with creating a meaningful brand engagement opportunity to excite current FB fans and attract new ones.

Creative Solution

The team hijacked consumers’ passionate fandom (music, travel, sports, food, beloved brands, etc) and turned that into fandom for Embassy Suites Hotels via a contest on Embassy Suites’ official Facebook page called “Über Fan.” The call-to-action asked extreme fans to show how taking their passion on the road with the help of Embassy Suites could help them go from regular fan to über fan, rewarding winner with $10,000, 20 Embassy Suites hotel stays, and an iPhone 4 to document their adventures.

Traditional and social media channels drove buzz, WOM, and entries about the contest, and Embassy’s newly grown online community served as the voting audience to select between top five Über Fan finalists. The team worked with finalists to conduct grassroots campaigning via Facebook, Twitter, and in-person advocacy to generate votes.

Action Generated

To date, the Über Fan campaign has generated 1.4MM Facebook impressions and nearly 2MM Twitter impressions through proactive engagement with the Embassy Suites social media community – 1MM Twitter impressions alone coming from a Twitter Party co-hosted by Twitter power user, “The Traveling Mom.” The program generated an 18% increase in the brand’s Facebook fan base, bringing total fans to over 40,000 Facebook users. Media outreach garnered nearly 5MM traditional media impressions to date (including broadcast coverage on NBC Chicago, and placements in the Chicago Sun-Times and USAToday.com