The McKittrick Hotel

How Grapeseed Media helped The McKittrick Hotel Achieve a 685% ROAS on its New Show

Background

Completed in 1939, The McKittrick Hotel was intended to be NYC’s finest luxury hotel. Two days after the outbreak of WWII, the legendary hotel was condemned. Until now…

The legendary space is reinvented with SLEEP NO MORE. Audiences move freely through a transporting world at their own pace, choosing their own path through the story, immersed in the most unique theatrical experience in NYC.

While SLEEP NO MORE practically sells itself, Grapeseed Media was tasked with promoting a lesser-known (to the US market) performance, THE WOMAN IN BLACK at the McKittrick Hotel.

Project Goal

Introduce a new show to past attendees and bring in new audiences
Drive a return-on-ad-spend of 300%+
Provide a trackable uptick in ticket sales
Favorably position The McKittrick Hotel in NYC’s return to theater after the COVID shutdown

Strategy

Leverage THE WOMAN IN BLACK purchasers list from other US cities to match and target NYC audiences with similar online interests and attributes
Using Mobile Footprinting (accessing historic mobile location data), target users based on how frequently they visit theaters in the city
Blend Audience Targeting with Contextual targeting by layering on top of our audience targeting parameters, a whitelist with theater centric publishers like NY Times Arts, Broadway World, TheaterMania, and Playbill.
Serve 85%+ of Audio (e.g. Spotify) and CTV ads (e.g. Apple TV, Hulu) to new audiences (those who did not visit McKittrick’s website previously).
Users who watch/listen to these upper-funnel ads will then be followed up with sales-driving Display and Social ads over the following two weeks. Ultimately, this surround-sound program aims to provide a full-funnel marketing approach.

Platforms

Display
Programmatic Audio
Streaming Video
Connected TV
Native
Paid Social

Results

685% return-on-ad-spend
85% audio and 98% CTV completion rates
0.23% CTR – 53% above benchmark
74% of Paid Social ticket sales were attributed to prospecting efforts
Top performing websites included: TimeOut NY, Playbill, NY Times, NY Post, YouTube, BroadwayWorld, The Infatuation
Added Value: The McKittrick Hotel did not have audio assets available, therefore, Grapeseed Media was able to produce within 2 business days