Elevating the role of social for a culture-driven luxury audience

eight&four worked with the ME by Meliá hotel brand for nearly 8 years as their lead retained social and content agency.

In 2019 we identified an opportunity to maximise content investment, reach and engagement through the consolidation of their complex social media ecosystem — the results were dramatic, and by month 3 of the consolidation process we had driven up post engagements and post reach by nearly 300%.

The Opportunity

ME by Meliá has historically operated on social like many other hotels do: a brand hub social channel with individual channels for each hotel and location.

In this scenario, investment is duplicated across locations and sometimes audiences, and it is a missed opportunity to tell the full, global story of the brand. On the other hand, the pros include the ability to reach a local audience with a local and relevant message.

Our strategy ensured we kept the best of both worlds whilst ensuring we maximise on social and content investment.

A new approach

The brand needed a new global/local editorial approach for a new era.

In January 2019 we transferred close to 1 million fans of the brand from local hotel pages into a single brand profile across Facebook and Instagram.

Tied to this was a new editorial approach that ensured local hotel exposure and global brand storytelling, and a global paid media and influencer plan was deployed to reinforce the global/local story by cross-selling new hotel locations to existing fans of the brand.

Our paid media plan also included the implementation of targeted dark paid activity for hyper-local in-hotel activations.