Building Audiences to

Move

Leveraging Word of Mouth Marketing for the McKittrick Hotel

Rebuilding with No Blueprint

The McKittrick Hotel tasked me with building on the success and notoriety of the midtown location to open a new venue in Manhattan

WHAT WE HAD

The reputation of The McKittrick Hotel and the producers of Sleep No More

An unmanaged database of nearly 1 million unique consumers

WHAT WE DIDN'T HAVE

Customer Analysis

Historical analytics on Acquisition

An Engaged Email List

WHAT WE HAD

The reputation of The McKittrick Hotel and the producers of Sleep No More

An Unmanaged Database of Nearly One Million Unique Consumers

WHAT WE NEEDED

Customer Analysis

Historical Analytics or Acquisition Strategies

An Engaged Email List

Getting to Know the Audience

To boost audience engagement, we first needed to dive into the McKittrick database and understand customer profiles.

The database analysis revealed large customer gaps which, which allowed me to develop new targets and audience segments for The McKittrick Hotel, building engagement with  fresh audiences.

Due to limited archival analytics and campaign strategies, I performed an analysis of the database determined spikes in consumer sales, then cross analyzed these spikes to identify historical marketing and press moments that could account for these trends. This helped to formulate the first complete analysis of Sleep No More’s acquisition strategies.

Leveraging Word of Mouth

Adhering to the producers requirement that marketing could not leverage traditional paid media, I developed a Word of Mouth campaign.

Two weeks after a popular regional Burn, we created an invitation to the local Burning Man community.

Targeting localBurning Man events, we seeded an offer for a discounted evening specifically for the Burning Man community.

The Burner Takeover of Sleep No More sold 31% over Sunday evening average sales and brought in 120 of new, unique emails to the database.

Similar partnerships were planned with Daybreakers, Girls Night In and other targeted groups aimed at an active 27-39 year old demographics.

The promotion sold 31% over the McKittrick's average Sunday night earnings

For the new venue, a Word of Mouth marketing campaign was designed to create buzz while upholding the mystery of the new space and show. The goal was to cryptically seed the theme of the new show and let curiosity take the wheel.

Through a partnership with Trinity Church, the final resting place of Alexander Hamilton, we proposed to invite the Trinity Church Youth Chorus to walk from Trinity Church to the new performance venue, performing arias from Charles Gounod’s famous 1862 opera. This stunt was positioned to serve as the location unveiling.

A sniping campaign featuring provocative images and quotes drawn in chalk on sidewalks across strategic neighborhoods in Manhattan and Brooklyn was proposed to raise visibility and seed conversation online.

Finally, partnering with the young, popular, press worthy, Nomadic Church, we sought to present the first portion of the new venue to the neighborhood and select guests by hosting a concert with light mapping in the new venue’s rotunda.

Building on The McKittrick’s legacy, these marketing strategies, along with a strategic brand development, strived to create a more durable and comprehensible brand/show relationship that did not previously exist with Sleep No More and The McKittrick Hotel.

Building out of The McKittrick's legacy, these marketing strategies, along with a brand development strategy, looked to create a more durable and comprehensible brand/show relationship for this new venue and performance launch.

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