Summary

Agency: Edelman

Client & Project: Booking - Ultimate Pride Experience

PR Stunt that took place in the Sofitel Legend The Grand in Amsterdam during Pride celebrations week, we built a rainbow suite featuring Art Work by the LGTBQ+ artist Eelco Hilgersom and we invited the Drag Envy Peru to spend a night in the room. Also media like Vice was invited to spend a night in the room and everything led to the final stunt, the room was offered in Booking.com where in a first book, first serve basis, the room could be enjoyed by someone from the public for 20 EUR. The room was sold out within 10 seconds.

I led the whole production and client communications from inception to delivery of the project.

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What was the challenge and how we tackled it

The challenge was to promote the support of Booking.com to the LGTBQ+ community through the Travel Proud Program by Booking, and the best moment to do so was during the Pride week celebrations in Amsterdam. Also this moment was the official beginning of the partnership with COC Netherlands, the oldest, still existing organisation of its kind.

We managed to secure a collaboration with the Sofitel Legend The Grand Hotel in Amsterdam which was the venue of the stunt. The Rainbow suite was available for a week, media took the room for 3 days, Envy Peru spent a night as well when some content for Social Media was filmed, and the weekend was booked for whoever could be the first to book on the Booking.com platform.

The guests could enjoy the masterpieces of an up-and-coming artist from the LGTBQ+ community (Eelco Hilgersom, some time with a drag icon (Envy Peru), culinary delicacies with rainbow colour inspiration, and exclusive VIP tickets to watch the famous Amsterdam Canals Parade.

The campaigns was promoted  before the Pride week with some Social Media teasers and reaching media who could be interested to write about the story and spend a night in the room. During the week, the artist and drag icon kept on promoting the stunt in Social Media, and also some content was created especially for the occasion and released during Pride week.

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What I did

1. Creative Strategy Definition and pitching ideas until the Pride Stunt was the winner.

2. Creative concept creation in close collaboration with the Creative and Booking team to navigate the different production challenges

3. Pre-production of the project: implementation of the timings plan, budgeting and resources assignment.

4. Oversee junior producer who run the day to day production tasks.

5. Coordination of all the stakeholders, the client, the hotel, the experiential crew, the film and Photography crew.

6. Main point of contact for the client for the production of the stunt.

7. Act as production lead during the whole development of the project overseeing the full team and correct compliance with budget and brand guidelines.

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The outcome

This activation resulted in 28+ articles in the Netherlands, in key publications across national dailies, lifestyle and D&I media, which has secured a high article reach of 33.8M.

In addition, 360 social media posts (Instagram/Facebook/LinkedIn) resulted in a high combined reach of 5.5M.

The experience also culminated articles all over the world, from Brazil to Japan and from Germany to the US.

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