Marketing Review — Fall 2008 - (Page 48)

treatments of a single melody. “One version was more cinematic, one was jazzier, one was hip-hop,” Bean says. “We wanted to have the same melody to tie it together but with variations so people wouldn’t be driven out of their minds.” Because the podcast program was in its pilot phase this year, GPTMC treated the tours as a work-in-progress—including their use of music. “On a couple of the podcast tours, we decided to cut down on the music because it was getting too overwhelming,” Bean says. Likewise, they eventually hit on four to six minutes as the sweet spot for a single segment. “We found if they run any longer, people lose interest, but any shorter and they become too superficial and listeners miss a lot of good content.” Podcasting and the boutique hotel Kimpton Hotels launched its own podcast experiment in July, going live with ten downloadable videos, featuring an overview of the chain, four individual hotels, three programs, and two restaurants. “I wanted to experiment with how strong a marketing tool podcasting might be,” says Steve Pinnetti, senior vice president of marketing for Kimpton Hotels. “Whenever we do a test like this, we pay for development and then track the results.” If it turns out that the podcasts are driving significant business to the hotels, corporate headquarters will bill for development costs and turn the programs over to the individual hotels. How many hits or downloads constitute success? “It’s all still so new, I don’t know how to gauge that exactly,” Pinnett admits. “If it gets into the tens of thousands, I think we’ll figure that’s not bad. My corporate site gets over 300,000 hits a month. I don’t know if that’s high or low but it’s a lot of viewers every day. Of course, that site has been up for years.” Located near Kimpton headquarters, Hotel Argonaut was one of the first hotels in the chain to design its own podcast. Using voiceover narration with a promotional slide show and video clips, the sixminute piece emphasizes the hotel’s unique perch on the waterfront and partnership with the National Park Service, which owns the surrounding 98,000 acres. The podcast takes the viewer through the hotel, a renovated 1903 warehouse, explaining its history and design, then moves outside to the waterfront, touching on various packages and events. Although Fourth of July fireworks are mentioned, the video is intended to remain as is, without constant updating. “We created the podcast so people could get a feel for the property and how it relates to its surroundings,” says Mark Tuten, director of sales and marketing for the three Kimpton hotels on the San Francisco waterfront. Tuten, who wrote the script and worked closely with the designers, believes the podcast will appeal How to Make an Effective Marketing Podcast If possible, divide a topic into bitesize chunks of about three to six minutes, the length of a pop song. If the topic warrants, offer mix-andmatch podcasts so viewers can choose the specifics that interest them and skip the rest. Make clickable icons consistent and easy to find. Place them near icons for downloading and RSS feeds, and label them clearly. Use music to boost, not drain, energy. Repetitive loops of canned music can get tiresome quickly. If the podcast involves video, try to incorporate actual video clips, not just still images. Scan a room, show people interacting, intersperse snippets of interview. Live action is far more interesting to watch than a slide show and brings a property to life in a way static images cannot. Podcasts are easy to pause or stop. Many viewers will not watch all the way through, especially if they run several minutes, so don’t bury crucial points at the end. Hire an actor or skilled speaker to narrate. No matter how brilliant the script, a stiff reading can take the life out of the information and make the presentation seem amateurish. Brainstorm unconventional approaches to your subject. Example: having a “dog” narrate the podcast on Kimpton’s pet-friendly program. As a medium, hospitality podcasting is youthful and fun-loving. Have a little fun with it. mainly to leisure travelers: “Most meeting planners don’t have six minutes to view a promotional piece or download it to their MP3 players.” The second Kimpton property to release a promotional video-podcast was the Scottsdale resort, Caleo, which Kimpton renamed Firesky. The early incarnation of this podcast is a bit confusing. It’s labeled Firesky Resort & Spa but the narration and graphics announce the resort’s former title instead. Featuring a slide show with no video clips and rather stiff narration, the Caleo/Firesky podcast runs a long nine minutes. More effective is the six-minute podcast on Kimpton’s pet-friendly program, told from the pet’s point of view by a narrator who claims he’s a dog. After the original podcasts have aired for 60 days, Kimpton’s technology department will present the marketing department with an analysis of how they’re being used and, in some cases, whether they’re leading directly to sales. “We are starting to bury links within the podcasts so people can click through to the Web site of the hotel or restaurant,” says Tuten. “We’ll soon have the ability to track whether they make a reservation that way. That’s really the truest measure. I know my sites drive about a third of calls that go to the 1-800KIMPTON call center. So I will know if these podcasts trigger calls.” Tuten is having the podcasts optimized for search engines, a trick he learned from marketing executives at Google, whose headquarters are 20 minutes from Kimpton’s. “Online searches have become a lot more dynamic. Search engines are scanning for video media and other forms of technology within a podcast or Web site,” he says. “Podcasts are made up of text, video, photos—anything used for content is an asset. I can actually optimize those assets so when someone is searching for a particular type of podcast, we can be found.” Cruise-casts from Disney After months of experimenting with podcasts aimed mainly at the media (www.disneypodcastnet.com), Disney launched a consumer series targeting potential cruise customers. “We know that our guests research various parts of the Disney Cruise vacation before even committing to a trip,” says Joe Rand, director of marketing for Disney HSMAI MARKETING REVIEW • FALL 2008 48 http://www.disneypodcastnet.com http://www.disneypodcastnet.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Marketing Review — Fall 2008

Marketing Review – Fall 2008 Contents The Online Marketer Success Stories Forecasting Trends Ian Schrager: The Revolutionary Man Leaving No Stone Unturned: The Quest for Ancillary Revenue Gaga Gadgets for Execs on the Go: Functional New Portable Technology to Make Life and Work on the Road More Hospitable Effectively Weathering the Ups and Downs of the Economic Cycle Experiments in Podcasting Higher Transportation Costs and a Slowing Economy Shift Hotel Room Demand

Marketing Review — Fall 2008

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