NEW YORK—When the hip-but-little-known CitizenM chain wanted to tell the world that it was ready to “inject some cool” into New York’s touristy Times Square area, it turned to Facebook and a kitschy New York tourist tradition—the sidewalk caricature.
"As a young hotel brand, opening in Times Square is hugely exciting. It was natural to us having Facebook as a medium to bring a great experience during our opening," said Diego Sartori, CitizenM’s social media strategist who oversees campaigns and the six-location chain's centralized social media accounts.
CitizenM New York, the first location for the brand in the United States, began accepting reservations 25 March. The cheeky brand caters to "mobile citizens," or creative, tech-savvy people who tend to travel the world for their work and for pleasure and seek out affordable style and convenience, Sartori said. It's known for modern, whimsical aesthetics; smaller-sized guestrooms; clean, European design; value-positioned rates; and residential-style public areas where people gather to work, chat, eat and drink. The hotels are also filled with art, such as a 32-foot-tall wall mural by Julian Opie in the New York location.
To capitalize on many of those themes, Sartori and CitizenM launched a Facebook contest focused on hip art.
In the final weeks prior to the hotel’s grand opening, CitizenM appealed to its target audience’s appreciation of kitsch, love of art and New York, and affection for selfless by inviting five "cool" New York City artists to draw 250 Facebook profile pictures in their own style. This was intentionally meant to be the opposite of what the Times Square artists do, Sartori said.
During the contest period, CitizenM posted the artwork on its Facebook accounts. People who scroll down the pages will see a Technicolor patchwork of edgy drawings, including Brooklyn-based illustrator Julia Pott’s fox-like reinvention of one Facebook profile subject and artist Mike Perry’s depiction of another profile subject surrounded by multi-colored puppies.
The consumers' hip portraits were published on citizenM's Facebook page, and they were sent a link via email telling them that they were among the lucky ones. Each drawing contains the red-and-black CitizenM logo in the upper right hand corner, giving CitizenM exposure.
“It’s like taking home a free caricature drawing, except it’s from a famous New York City illustrator, and much cooler,” one of the hotel’s Facebook posts says.
The contest proved to be a hit.
It was no coincidence that the artists chosen each have a strong social media presence themselves, so each time they showed their work to their fans, it generated even more exposure.
More than 3,000 people clicked the Facebook-page button to enter the contest, Sartori said. Contest entrants were mostly from New York City, but also from London and Amsterdam, cities where CitizenM already operates hotels, Sartori said. People who didn't win a drawing received an email with the subject line that read: “You're a loser baby,” telling them the sad news, along with an invite to visit the hotel at the introductory rate of $199.
Is the campaign geared toward building Facebook numbers? Not necessarily, Sartori said. CitizenM never previously focused on counting, or growing, the number of Facebook “likes."
"One thing we don't look at much is the number of likes for the sake of having a big number, because any brand can buy likes,” he said, citing the price of a "like" can be as low as a few cents in some countries. But the person might never travel outside the country.
“When we calculate the (return on investment of proactive campaigns), we have looked at activations, impressions and engagement," Sartori said.
Times, however, are changing, he said. CitizenM is starting to track “likes” now after Facebook made changes to its advertising opportunities, he said. Facebook now allows advertisers to target a specific set of users with whom they already have an established relationship, he said.
"You can match a whole database with a Facebook database, so you can see who of your customers and who of your guests are on Facebook, and we can target them,” Sartori said. For the New York City campaign, he said he targeted people who lived locally and fit in a certain age group.
CitizenM is on a growth spurt, so Sartori is busy planning other social media programs geared toward opening new hotels. But whether this same contest will be repeated is not yet clear.
"We learn and bring something cooler each time," he said.