IWearYourShirt.com Comes to Grand Rapids
Situational Analysis:
The Amway Hotel Collection (AHC), located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is comprised of the JW Marriott, Amway Grand Plaza, and Downtown Courtyard by Marriott. Grand Rapids, and these three hotels, are no stranger to social media, in fact, it is one of the cities vying for the Good Fiber for Communities project, which will drive new technologies to change the way people collaborate through education, health care, and other industries. Our charge was to create a buzz for the city, and the three hotels, to spread the word about what Grand Rapids had to offer using social media. AHC wanted to spark online conversations and comments about the city and the hotels.
Tactic:
We sought out Jason Sadler from IWearYourShirt.com to partner with. Sadler, who promotes a different client daily wearing a shirt with its logo for a nominal fee, leverages the popularity of social media and promotes the client of the day via YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, blog, live web video and e-blasts. While Sadler usually works from his home base in Florida, we took it one step further and flew him to Grand Rapids for a week to stir up excitement and give residents the chance to engage with the “social media celebrity.” While on location, Sadler agreed to promote the city and AHC every day of the week, even on days when he was wearing a shirt for a different company.
AHC purchased two days during the week Sadler was in town. In addition to promoting a special hotel discount on his shirt, AHC offered overnight hotel packages to a total of 16 lucky winners who “like” the hotels’ Facebook pages during Sadler’s stay.
Results:
During the week that Sadler stayed in Grand Rapids, there were over ONE-MILLION mentions on the web about the city, the Amway Grand Plaza, or the JW Marriott. Web traffic for the JW Marriott’s website spiked 8000% over the week, and the collection’s business-focused website saw traffic spike 450%! There were also some bookings as a result. The client’s main goals were to spark online conversations and drive visitors to the websites; both were overwhelmingly achieved.
Budget:
In addition to the retainer for Q&C, the campaign total cost was under $3,000, which included Jason’s flight to Grand Rapids, hotel, and meal stipend.
