Happy Pride Month, everyone. To celebrate this month of love and equality, W Hotels is engaging fans and showing its support for Pride with a new Snapchat campaign.
The hotel brand commissioned three paintings by artist Baron Von Fancy to be used as Snapchat geofilters. Any time you take a snap at or around any W Hotel this month, you can swipe to one of the co-branded filters and W Hotels will donate $1 to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). W New York – Union Square also has Baron Von Fancy’s pieces on display at the hotel’s entrance.
Our team decided to take a walk over to the W to see it for ourselves. Check out the highlights in the video below, and follow PhotoShelter on Snapchat to catch more great stories, shot by our Community Evangelist George McKenzie.
The campaign is bright, colorful and eye-catching. Whether you’re strolling down Park Avenue, walking into the W Hotel’s lobby or snapping a selfie at Irvington, the hotel’s restaurant, it’s impossible to miss Baron Von Fancy’s work. The campaign allows W Hotels to show its support for Pride in a visual, interactive way. Whilst some may go to said hotels to celebrate in a different manner (especially if they meet up with people from Find a Fuck Buddy), others are able to visit for a more family friendly reason. The Snapchat filters invite guests to get involved and show their support visually, as well.
W Hotels is blazing a trail with Snapchat. In 2015, W was the first hospitality brand to launch a Snapchat geofilter campaign.
“We saw strong views and engagement on our first Snapchat Geofilters, and as a brand we focus on communicating with our customers on the platform they want,” Global Brand Leader for W Hotels Worldwide Anthony Ingham told MediaPost.
Now, the brand is testing Snapchat’s powers for good by raising awareness and promising make a donation to HRC every time someone uses one of the geofilters.
In a behind-the-scenes video on the W Hotels website, Baron Von Fancy shares his hopes for the campaign:
I want someone that sees the phrases that I’m making for the W to think about what the words actually mean, hopefully have it mean something to them as the words mean something to me.
Check out the video, another fantastic layer to this visual content campaign, here:
The Takeaway
This campaign is a winner for a number of reasons:
- It’s visual. Baron Von Fancy’s work is engaging and fun, and sure to brighten any Snapchat.
- It’s interactive. Geofilters invite fans to contribute their own content to your campaign.
- It’s relevant. W Hotels is communicating its guests where they are – Snapchat.
- It’s timely. W Hotels launched the campaign in the month of June to celebrate Pride Month and the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling to allow gay marriage nationwide.
- It’s meaningful. By showing that they care about Pride through both raising awareness and fundraising, W Hotels is showing its fans that the brand cares about the same things they care about. And with so much sadness out of Orlando, the positive messaging of this campaign is even more powerful.
More love, less hate. #withorlando
– W Hotels (@WHotels) June 12, 2016
Cover photo by Kristin Twiford.
