- The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company is shifting its marketing strategy with its first recent global brand campaign in over a decade, based on a press release.
- “Leave Better” represents a multi-million dollar investment and focuses on the transformation guests undergo, with “How will a stay leave you?” serving because the guiding mantra. Ads depict the before-after theme with artful shots of buds blossoming and seasons changing.
- Creative will appear across print, digital video, display and paid social, with The Ritz-Carlton leveraging a partnership with the Condé Nast network to succeed in a world audience. The refresh comes because the Marriott International-owned luxury chain revamps its collection of internet sites and expands into recent markets.
The Ritz-Carlton is attempting to refresh its image at a transitional point for the hospitality category, which continues to be finding its legs after a battering few pandemic years and searching for to capitalize on the “revenge travel” trend. “Leave Better,” developed with longtime agency partner Team One, complements other initiatives being undertaken by the corporate that should give consumers a distinct perception of the brand.
The international marketing push follows a wide-ranging overhaul of The Ritz-Carlton’s network of over 100 web sites in August. The makeover, executed with help from agency Code and Theory, introduces more video and visually driven elements to The Ritz-Carlton’s digital presence, aiming to capture the texture of a premium, mobile-friendly online magazine.
The Ritz-Carlton has also recently expanded into recent territories, including Mexico City, Melbourne and Fukuoka, and opened a location in Manhattan’s NoMad neighborhood. In May, the posh marketer unveiled a superyacht cruise with plans to set sail in September 2024.
“Leave Better” emphasizes how booking a stick with The Ritz-Carlton may be personally enriching, leaving visitors higher off than they got here. But the creative takes an unconventional approach to getting the message of self-discovery across. Rather than showing guests having fun with the hotel chain’s amenities, like lounging by the poolside, the campaign uses metaphor and abstraction as an instance the transformative theme.
“What sets The Ritz-Carlton apart is what guests take away from their stay: the epiphanies, recent perspectives, and transformations,” said Julie Michael, CEO Team One, in an announcement. “We really desired to amplify the before-and-after moment of how The Ritz-Carlton changes you.”
An anthem spot depicts a bud blooming right into a flower, a wintry transition to spring, an egg hatching right into a bird taking wing and an oyster unclasping to disclose a luminous pearl, all set to a pulsing electronic rating. Each of those concepts is captured in greater detail in individual hero videos. Print ads have a similarly artful bent, showing the identical transitions through still images.
“Leave Better” is running in several languages in the U.S., Japan, China, Germany, the UAE and Saudi Arabia with help from Condé Nast. Several other hotel marketers have taken the post-pandemic period as a chance to shift gears on the marketing front. Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, a high-end rival, last fall relaunched its brand with its largest paid media investment up to now.
Hovering in the background is the hospitality category’s ongoing battle with vacation-rental upstarts which have courted favor with young consumers like millennials and Gen Z. Airbnb, the biggest disruptor, has been heavily promoting a campaign that swipes at traditional hotels, an effort that comes as the positioning grapples with a regulatory crackdown in key cities like New York.
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