Who wouldn’t want the ‘Best Bed InThe House’?
Especially if it is at the Hilton Garden Inn inside Lancashire Country Cricket Club’s famous Old Trafford stadium.
Hilton Garden Inn activated its sponsorship with Lancashire County Cricket Club at the team’s Old Trafford with a campaign called ‘Best Bed In The House’ that set out to offer a unique live sports viewing experience through the lens of our hotel environment.
The campaign, which ran from mid July through to late September, began with a competition that resulted in winning guests spending the day watching the Test match from a branded space that attended to their every need.
The initiative, developed in harness with Smyle Creative, placed the brand centre stage and delivering a fun experience.
The objective behind this activation was to create an engaging experience to promote and bring to life the Hilton Garden Inn brand and differentiate it from the other Hilton brands in the UK.
The brand is less well known in the UK and sponsorship formed part of a wider strategy to raise awareness in order to drive sales.
The opening of the new Manchester Emirates Old Trafford hotel within the grounds coincided with the 2017 Lancashire County Cricket season: Hilton Garden Inn decided to become a main sponsor and create an experiential activation at key matches to raise the profile of their brand – and of their very conveniently located hotel.
The LCCC sponsorship offered a unique opportunity of using a traditional space for hospitality within the stadium grounds.
As the HGI brand is about being positive, bright hearted, and socialising with friends and family, the fit with cricket was perfect for both the target audience and the hotel location.
The activity, which ran through nine matches during the domestic cricket season, offered a strong visual presence to attract further exposure via coverage from the print and broadcast media channels present (particularly Sky Sports).
Additionally the competition element, and engaging content, offered strong social media opportunities.
The campaign’s business objectives included:
• To differentiate Hilton Garden Inn from other Hilton brands, and raise overall brand awareness by showcasing the brand’s bright-hearted hospitality and enable people to experience it first hand.
• To launch the new Hilton Garden Inn hotel located inside the Emirates Old Trafford grounds.
The HGI brand was put centre stage to gain maximum brand exposure in an ‘outdoor bedroom garden’. Our challenge was that HGI is not yet as well known in the UK as in US brand so we needed something eye catching.
The activation saw the creation of a set of hotel bedrooms as an outdoor viewing platform and hospitality space for people to enjoy watching Test matches from after entering a competition to win the ‘Best Bed In The House’.
The outdoor bedroom showcased four super king-size beds with branded canopies, elevated on a branded deck for prime views of the match. It also provided a space for media to broadcast from.
Every bed setting was a mirror image of that inside the hotel, from the headboard to the wood finish to the light sconce – and even the bedlinen!
Guests spent the day with friends and family, with their every need attended to by highly trained Hilton ambassadors, with a special room service menu and goodie bags containing delicious treats.
The competition was run in several ways.
For the first match, ticket holders received a branded neck tube at main gates and were encouraged to wear it and take fun selfies to post on social media tagged with @HGIManchester and #HGIcricket for a chance to win.
This created a strong presence throughout the stadium and kick started the online conversation, generating almost 3000 entries.
Winners were announced inside the stadium using the large screens and PA system and contacted via social media.
Hilton and LCCC also sent out emails inviting people to enter to win via a competition microsite.
For the subsequent Test matches, winners were selected from across social media and DM competitions having been invited to answer a cricket-related question to win.
The campaign also saw the agency create a bespoke webpage in partnership with the LCCC: www.hgioutdoorbeds.com
Comment:
In terms of results, the approach to the activation maximised brand exposure and achieved a total reach of more than 15 million.
• It reached 83,000 fans in the stadium during the cricket season
• The environment had a highly visible brand presence for stadium and Sky TV audiences, as it directly faced the numerous cameras broadcasting the matches Neilson data around this coverage includes;
· 5.8M televised reach – Total coverage across Sky Sports live and Channel 5 highlights
· £320k Total Media value
· 712 – Number of times our Hilton Garden Inn hotel was seen during TV coverage
· 107 – Number of times our activation space was seen during TV coverage
• 4 print and online titles including The Telegraph and the Guardian featured our terrace as their ‘Pic of the Day’.
• 500k impressions on owned social channels, and 1.9m across partner channels
• Our BDRC (EMEA evaluation tool) found significant recall and awareness shifts
– 82% activation recall
– 86% Thought LCCC and Hilton Garden Inn partnership was a good fit –
the highest we have seen in EMEA
– 72% would consider an HGI for future stays
– High overall hotel brand awareness at 77% than UK average at 24%
– Very high levels of Hilton Garden Inn website/booking activity partly attributed to LCCC activation.
Indeed, both sponsor and rights-holder felt that the project was so successful that Hilton Garden Inn entered discussions regarding a bigger re-activation with LCCC and Old Trafford for 2018 – saving around 25% of the budget through re-purposing.
Links:
Hilton Garden Inn
http://hiltongardeninn3.hilton.com
https://twitter.com/HiltonGardenInn
https://www.facebook.com/hiltongardeninnuk
https://www.instagram.com/hiltongardeninn
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeZLIZsSGy-e9KIh6AU1Ojg/featured
LCCC
http://www.lancashirecricket.co.uk/
https://twitter.com/lancscricket
https://www.facebook.com/LancsCCC/
https://www.youtube.com/user/LancsCCCOfficial
https://www.instagram.com/lancsccc/
Smyle Creative
