Hotel Tacoma is a pop up hotel/truck-playground that’s designed to let people live and breathe Tacoma’s “Play Now” campaign. We set out to create a place where humans could go back to basics, rediscover their wild side, and form a tribe that worships only one thing: having the time of their lives! Our mantra: let us rebel against boring weekends, one rooster tail at a time, year after year.

We wanted the news of the first ever Hotel Tacoma to reach every off-road fan in the country. Instead of talking about it ourselves, we let our guests do the talking. To achieve maximum exposure in our target market, we invited off-road legends like B.J. Baldwin and Andy Bell. To expand our reach even further, our guest list also included influential actors, athletes, models, even a wolf-dog. They organically posted about their time at Hotel Tacoma on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Hotel Tacoma happened in the Hualapai Mountain Park in the Arizona High Desert. We took over the entire 2,300 acres for a long weekend and turned the whole place into our personal 5-star hotel and playground. The event was teased to the general public on social media one week prior to its kick-off. There was also an additional activation for two exclusive open spots at the Toyota sponsored Stagecoach festival.

The guest list consisted of over 80 hand selected influencers from different fields related to the Tacoma mindset: actors, athletes, riders and artists all came together to celebrate the spirit of play. Additionally, there were around 80 people of staff – hospitality, chefs, riders, musicians, film teams etc. – who helped turn Hotel Tacoma into an unforgettable experience for each one of our guests.

The Tacoma launch campaign was able to positively shift its perception as a fun, exciting and adventurous vehicle, as well as maintain its opinion dominance within the compact truck segment, even with the reentrance of an all-new domestic, Chevy Colorado.

Social:

The use of influencers delivered a high volume of organic impressions and engagements, most notably by @Loki_the_wolfdog on Instagram

The natural feel and use of popular, relevant influencers (i.e. Andy Bell) helped the live videos deliver strong view rates (26%) especially among the paid targeted audience (31% paid VR vs. 9% organic VR)

PR:

-More than 50 articles mentioned Hotel Tacoma

-A majority of the early coverage was driven by celebrities and influencers attending the event 105.8M Unique Monthly Views from 38 Hotel Tacoma published articles

-150MM impressions

(Results only cover May 15-June 5 timeframe, immediate timeframe surrounding event which took place May 20-22)