Overview
Posh Cockney was hired to provide Marketing, PR, and Social Media services for Andaz London - a 5-star luxury lifestyle hotel located in the heart of East London. This case study will focus on the integration of Posh Cockney as an extension of the hotel’s Marcomms team to generate buzz within the local market through storytelling, partnerships, and brand activations.
Upon signing with the client, Posh Cockney proposed ideas that would achieve the objectives set in the RFP - one of which was the #BeWhoYouAre campaign. This social media-led campaign aimed to create an online viral movement and obtain lots of positive press. Ultimately, increasing search and web traffic, social media following and engagement, and brand awareness.
The proposal intended to integrate local brands and communities to communicate the brand’s ethos of embracing its surroundings – thus, allowing its guests to enter the hotel premises as travellers and leave as locals.
Our Objective
Andaz London came to Posh Cockney intending to elevate the overall brand awareness of the hotel and its five restaurant and bar outlets. The three main areas of focus were:
Andaz London Liverpool Street (Overall hotel positioning) - Strengthen brand awareness and the hotel’s positioning as the leading vibrant, creative, and inspiring lifestyle hotel in East London
Food and Beverage Outlets - Raise profile and awareness of Andaz London’s dining options individually as high-street brands
Events & Weddings - Raise awareness of the unique and diverse event venue options
However, the main objectives of this campaign focused on the following:
Generating brand awareness for Andaz London across the Greater London area, and gaining extensive exposure for the brand and hotel to the target audience. Posh Cockney aimed to achieve this through a viral social media campaign and positive press coverage.
The said target audience set by Andaz London was the following:
- 25-45-year-olds
- Businessmen/women
- Creatives
- Londoners
- People living in cities and towns at the ends of rail lines connected to Liverpool Street Station
Challenges
Posh Cockney spent one-month learning about Andaz from the inside and out. With history weaved throughout the building and the brand, there was plenty to shout about. However, in the process of planning this campaign, the team faced a few challenges, one of which was the need for a marketing budget for the rest of the year. This posed a threat to the campaign as it involved working with global and local brands and influencers. Thus, our approach needed to take this into consideration.
Another obstacle we had to overcome was the lack of responses from global and local brands and influencers. Therefore, we ramped up our email marketing campaign by ethically sourcing emails to get in touch with respective employees working under each brand.
Once the timeline and the strategy were finalised, we were set to carry out all tasks necessary to make this campaign successful. Leading up to the online launch and the launch event, a series of unprecedented events occurred thus postponing both launches. Posh Cockney worked closely with the Andaz London team through weekly virtual meetings to discuss the plan of action to launch the campaign at an appropriate time to achieve the set objectives.
Our Approach
Key members of the team were invited to immerse themselves in the hotel to provide feedback on its 5-star service and to fully understand the Andaz brand from the inside out. Alongside this, in-depth market research was undertaken to layout the foundation and timeline of the campaign. As the target audience was set by Andaz, our job was to create the campaign message that would appeal to the selected demographic.
As this was the first summer without any restrictions, our team assessed the current marketing trends to guide us in constructing a campaign message and strategy that would strengthen brand awareness and positioning of the hotel. We anticipated trends such as the opening of the Elizabeth line that would bring an influx of local travellers, and the growing conversations surrounding inclusivity and diversity, whilst integrating these trends into the interesting stories behind the Andaz brand.
We identified the most appropriate time to launch the campaign by laying out key dates for the remainder of 2022. We highlighted September as an ideal period due to locals returning from holidays, and would allow us to either include them in the campaign or invite them to the launch party. Leading up to the launch, we spent two months reaching out to brands to sponsor the event, invite guests, and capture campaign content. Once we had captured content, we moved onto planning the launch party – with the help of the PR and Social Media teams, over 60 influencers and [number] of journalists were invited to the launch event. We had Moet & Chandon sponsor beverage for the event, whilst we liaised with Andaz London to put together the food offering from each of the six F&B outlets they had for the #BWYA launch party.
What we did
With all our campaigns, we began doing market research as we had hoped to launch the campaign in July. However, this eventually was pushed to September as we identified a prime time to target the selected audience. We then drafted the campaign message which was signed off by the client, and served as our guide to accomplishing tasks to launch the campaign online and through an event.
The specific tasks undertaken involved:
- Logo and website design
- Research on relevant brands and influencers for a partnership
- Email marketing reach out to local and global brands
- Gather and interview participants (which included guests, employees, and partnering brands)
- Create the press release
- Edit the campaign photos and videos
- FAM Trips to Andaz London with participating brands
- Plan out the launch event
- Schedule posting for the next 4-months
- Plan out activations following the launch event
Once all had been planned out, we moved on to event planning and management, which involved the following tasks:
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- Creating the guestlist (influencers and journalists)
- Invitation Creation
- Creation of event collateral
- Send out RSVPs
- Weekly Client Meetings
The Results
As this was a social media-led campaign, the results came back outstandingly positive for Andaz London. The campaign was shared across three platforms: Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. The results showed that upon launching, there were almost 100 tagged stories and posts on the Andaz London Instagram account. On the day of the event, they gained 236 new followers, with over 108% of new accounts reached and impressions boosted by 217%. To ensure engagement was consistent for their Instagram account at this time, a story prompt reel was created and gained almost 5,000 views. With the increase in posts and reach on Instagram, many of the posts urged viewers to visit the #BeWhoYouAre website which housed the interview videos and biographies of each participant. The results of the campaign showed that the website had reached over 1.4k users within the first month of launch, and reported that most users directly clicked the link from posts on social media.
Whereas from a PR perspective, the campaign generated six pieces of coverage, which not only mentioned the campaign but opened up a platform for Andaz London to discuss other topics such as the hotel appointing a new director of Human Resources and providing the General Manager, Mario Flanagan with a platform to be introduced as the ‘Hotel Expert’. Features were included in notable publications such as Hotel Owner – a must-read publication for UK hoteliers and hotel managers, and Conde Nast Traveler – a luxury and lifestyle travel magazine. These features accumulated an estimated publication-wide viewership of 262k with an approximate 7.38k views based on audience reach and engagement.
What's next?
The launch of the campaign opened various opportunities for Andaz London to further the conversation on inclusivity, and diversity and celebrate creativity through collaborations with different brands and new audiences. In December 2022, Andaz London is working with Black Girl Knit Club to bring a festive pom-pom workshop for hotel guests, BGKC members and Londoners to enjoy.
As an extension to celebrating creativity and self-expression, the luxury hotel is collaborating with the University of Westminster to bring East London an engrossing art showcase featuring artwork from Fine Art, Illustration and Photography students. This aims to bring together hotel guests, students and families together at Andaz London.
Looking forward to 2023, Andaz London will be hosting the participating designers, Electronic Sheep, for a retail popup just after London Fashion Week and leading up to St. Patrick’s Day. This provides Andaz with the opportunity to tap into their fanbase located in Ireland as well as across the Greater London area.
To quote the general manager, Mario Flanagan, “Andaz London is so much more than just a hotel… Every Andaz hotel aims for guests to arrive as visitors and leave as locals, embodying the local area at every opportunity… This is going to be a hugely exciting few months – we have lots planned and I know this is just the beginning.”
He is right, this is only the beginning for Andaz and Posh Cockney are on the lookout for more brands and activations that will continue to push this important message around London City and beyond.
“Posh Cockney are hands on and have delivered successful events and campaigns for Andaz London in a short period. Their work on the #BeWhoYouAre campaign is a great example of this.” – Saakshi Verma, Marketing and Communications Manager, Andaz London