Consistently voted the world's most luxurious hotel, Burj Al Arab (BAA) has attracted international attention ensuring its place as one of the most photographed structures in the world. To showcase this, the Jumeirah group created a video with the aim of achieving as many views as possible in order to engage with viewers inspirationally, improve strategic keyword rankings on search engines, and drive traffic to the BAA website.
The campaign would enable the brand to measure sentiment towards the hotel through viewer’s comments and increase awareness among luxury savvy travellers. The campaign used social media to give fans a sneak preview of the video before anyone else, to increase loyalty.
The theme of the video was in line with the architecture of the hotel which is designed to resemble a billowing sail. The video tagline “leave the ordinary behind” was chosen to reflect the status of Burj Al Arab as an icon where guests can expect extraordinary experiences. The video not only showcases BAA exterior but also draws attention to the hotel’s panoramic views, interiors and facilities.
YouTube was used as the primary channel. To promote the video, keyword targeting techniques were used, a landing page was created on the BAA website, and the video was publicised via Twitter and Facebook - along with other social media channels in different languages to interact with the social community who discussed the video.
Jumeirah's social media fans and followers were treated to an exclusive preview of the ad ahead of the world's media. PR and a YouTube advertising campaign promoted the video in key feeder markets - the UK and Germany. The video was also featured in the YouTube Spotlight section in several Arab countries. The tagline of the video was translated into different languages and localised versions were promoted through the Jumeirah multilingual website to achieve a more culturally connected experience for the viewers.
Results
The video has been viewed more than 700,000 times within the first two weeks of campaign on Jumeirah’s YouTube channel.
The video received more than 60 likes on Jumeirah’s UK Facebook page when it was first released, and was viewed more than 3,700 times on its account on Chinese kaixin001 (the Facebook equivalent in China)
Jumeirah was the first brand in the Middle East to run a YouTube video pre-roll campaign, and this video was the most watched hotel video in 2011 (*Source: Digital IQ).
Traffic to Burj Al Arab homepage increased by 9.99% in the two week period following the video launch, and the homepage increased its new visitors by 11.17% in that period only.
The impact of the campaign on search engine rankings was high.
YouTube campaign results: - UK: 121,812 clicks, Germany: 98,734 clicks, US: 399,988 clicks.