At EAST VILLAGE., hospitality PR is something that we are all very passionate about; from regional launch parties to national PR campaigns, the world of food, drink and great service gets us excited!
The fast-paced and sales-driven environment is something that #TeamEV thrives on, so when Malmaison Birmingham first appointed us to work with them just a few months after EAST VILLAGE., launched, we couldn’t wait to jump right in with our hospitality PR expertise. We pulled out all of the stops and made this Frasers Hospitality property the one-stop destination for tourists and corporates alike; reminding the city of a much-loved destination and bringing people back through the doors.
Thankfully, the fun stop there, after working with Malmaison Birmingham for two years, we were then appointed to work with a total of nine Malmaison and Hotel du Vin properties across the UK, in locations including Reading, London, Stratford-upon-Avon, Cheltenham, Oxford and Henley-on-Thames.
THE ASK.
Across the nine sites that we’ve worked with, each General Manager, Sales Manager, and wider hotel team have had slightly different needs. Broadly, our work across the sites has included local marketing activity, event support, social media management, influencer marketing, and most importantly, hospitality PR strategy. Although both well-known and respected brands, they required EAST VILLAGE’s hospitality PR and marketing expertise to drive forward brand recognition, leading to new customers and ensuring that the momentum for returning guests continued.
We worked closely with each on-site team to create and deliver a marketing strategy that would help boost sales and generate new revenue streams. For some hotels, this was focused around driving meetings and events, and for others it was footfall through the bar and restaurant. Understanding their needs and their customer base formed the individual approach for each site. Not only did each hotel have different needs of support from us, but they also had very different customers and offerings, which in turn meant that we had to tailor our marketing strategy to reflect this.
OUR APPROACH.
Using our hospitality PR expertise, we helped each hotel build relationships with not only the regional press but also with key journalists across hospitality trade media. We drove PR activity in all aspects of the hotel; from local new menu launches and team appointments, to major refurbishments and expert comments on topical news stories. Our PR activity helped to reinforce positive reviews and drive brand awareness to the hotel’s core demographics. Beyond our traditional PR activity, we also helped secured numerous regional and national award wins for many of the locations, journalist and blogger reviews, and also managed several crisis comms situations that popped up over the six years.
Ensuring that brand awareness and positive reviews came from the right people, not only did we build great relationships with the press, but also with local businesses. Working with brands that aligned with Hotel du Vin and Malmaison; including Castle Fine Art, Edinburgh Gin, and The Alex Theatre and Castle Fine Art. We helped make introductions and run joint promotions and events, ensuring that Hotel du Vin and Malmaison were always in front of the right audiences.
At EAST VILLAGE. we pride ourselves on always creating memorable, show-stopping events, and this was no different for our time working with Frasers Hospitality. From menu launches to cocktail parties, blogger events and networking mixers, we helped to keep the party going all night long. Ensuring that the guestlist was always filled with local movers and shakers, we helped to create a buzz at each event which lasted beyond the end of the night, guaranteeing guests would return. We also helped deliver what has become one of Birmingham’s most talked about events, the launch of Malmaison’s brand new M&E concept: work+play, creating a blueprint for other hotels to deliver their own launch events.
For all of the hotel locations, we provided social media management, which became one of the most crucial channels for them. This included creating a tailored social media marketing strategy, content creation, ads management and community management. Liaising with the brand’s internal comms team and the on-site staff, we generated social media plans each month that reflected the location, the brand, and the seasonal sales. We grew all of the social media platforms Facebook pages, whilst also launching an Instagram page for each location, ensuring that they kept on trend with the most popular platform. Using social media advertising, we crafted monthly ad campaigns, all tailored to increase brand awareness, drive new sales, and create conversions when promoting new offers.
END RESULTS.
Throughout our time working with Hotel du Vin and Malmaison, we successfully grew their Facebook pages, receiving over 13k likes and 16million Facebook impressions. We also grew the brand-new Instagram accounts to receive a total of 11k Instagram followers and a 7million reach across all of the site’s profiles. During our time managing the social accounts, we secured a following that engaged with the brand, ensuring longevity in amazing organic social results, and helped drive user-generated content by the guests on site.
The PR reach speaks for itself; during our time working with the brands we received over 250 pieces of coverage, resulting in a reach of over 17 million and an estimated value of £473k. This included extensive coverage in each region and some highlights including The Caterer, Metro, Evening Standard, Imbibe, BBC and MSN News. Malmaison and Hotel du Vin began working with EAST VILLAGE. to maximise their brand awareness and generate sales, and with a reach of over 17 million across the UK, our hospitality PR expertise did exactly that!
In addition, we also helped manage a whole host of marketing and events activity – just some of the highlights include: launching the work+play concept, organising and managing wedding fairs and fashion shows, countless food and drink reviews and tastings, a bloggers afternoon tea with Bumble, a Ladies Day Ascot event with a local charity, a fundraiser for Women’s Aid, launched an art space with the first exhibition launch seeing Duran Duran’s Roger Taylor in attendance, organised and hosted high profile business dinners, created gift drops that inspired company-wide promotions, more photoshoots than we can remember, and so much more!
