To support the launch and social media management of Austin’s newest luxury hotel destination, JW Marriott partnered with Social Distillery. With SXSW around the corner, Austin’s largest hotel (34 stories and 1,000 rooms) hired Social Distillery to support their grand opening in February 2015 with the goal of increasing brand awareness for their property and its three on-site restaurants: Corner, Burger Bar, and Osteria Pronto.
With an evolving media landscape and equally complex marketing strategy, Social Distillery developed an integrated marketing roadmap to focus on both short-term and long-term goals across paid, owned and earned media.
The latest and greatest hotel in downtown Austin, the JW Marriott was looking to make a splash. Social Distillery created a comprehensive social strategy to successfully launch the hotel and its three restaurants. From community management to paid ads and campaign support, Social Distillery provided a one-stop-shop of social services to help grow their social presence, increase general awareness and provide an unrivaled level of service to their community.
Day-to-day community management and customer service helped increase brand awareness, build brand loyalty and portray the essence of JW Marriott across social. Our work was even featured in Forbes as an example of how to do social customer care the right way.
Content is at the heart of everything social and a community like the JW Marriott’s demands unique and authentic insights. As regulars on the property, Social Distillery was able to capture the details and moments needed to paint an accurate portrait of the JW’s luxurious flagship hotel.
A major part of the social strategy was the emphasis on real-time content. With no designated content creator in place, Social Distillery helped JW Marriott establish a “Social Committee” dedicated to capturing an authentic feel of the hotel and restaurants on a weekly basis. The JW’s community was also leveraged to generate content and utilize word-of-mouth marketing, helping it become one of the “Most Instagrammed Places in Austin” in its first year.
Social has quickly become a “pay to play” network, meaning that if you don’t include a paid element to your social strategy you will have a very hard time reaching your community – let alone your target market. Social Distillery implemented a month-by-month ad strategy to help increase the community size and overall awareness for the JW Marriott Austin’s three restaurants: Burger Bar, Corner, and Osteria Pronto. With constant monitoring and adjusting, we were able to grow their communities by an average of 49% each month, quickly outpacing their competitors average monthly growth of 4%.
SXSW is renowned in Austin and is a great place for learning about new technology, fresh ideas and – of course – the most trendy music. It’s also the perfect time for a new Austin hotel to say hello to the city, and what better way than by partnering with local businesses? Thus the JW Marriott #GriffinHunt was born. With only a week until SXSW, Social Distillery onboarded local Austin businesses to host a JW #GriffinHunt decal for the duration of the festival. People were encouraged to find a decal and post it to Twitter or Instagram for a chance to win a JW prize, including a weekend stay in a suite, with complimentary breakfast for two. Between our #GriffinHunt hashtag (280K+ impressions), our locally targeted social ads (90K+ impressions), and our organic promotions (62K+), we received over 430K in impressions, and that doesn’t even count our reach from pedestrian traffic. Considering SXSW only had about 100k in attendance, I think it’s safe to say that our campaign touched everyone in one way or another.
fans across the JW Marriott Austin brands and social channels
mentions driven by social media over one year
likes across all social channels in one year
clicks driven by social media over one year
