The Campaign

The Art Series Hotels are a luxury hotel chain located in Melbourne, Australia. Each hotel is themed and displays works by famous Australian artists. They needed to ensure occupancy rates were maximised over their quiet summer period and asked us to create a PR campaign to sell 1000 beds. On a limited $80K budget we needed to find a hook to earn the exposure. We wanted controversy, but in a manner befitting this contemporary, hip, art led hotel chain. So we took inspiration from the forensic psychology adage 'Bad men do what good mean dream', applying it to the hotel industry (synonymous with petty theft) and the art world (art heists). With this, our idea was born- 'Steal Banksy'- Stay the night. Steal the art. If guests could steal an original piece of art by street artist 'Banksy' (valued at $15,000) without being caught it was theirs to keep. If apprehended, back on the wall it went. We launched the campaign with a media call, instigating several journalists to document their own attempts. After the initial PR push we kept momentum by using social media to give clues to the painting's whereabouts and showcase CCTV footage of foiled attempts. Even celebrities, including Serena Williams, made attempts and tweeted about it. The campaign generated attention throughout Australian media (e.g. Sydney Morning Herald, The Age) and across the globe including; CNN, LA Times and New York Observer. PR mentions spanned news, travel and art media, print, radio, online- receiving over 300 mentions.

The Brief

The goal was to have 1000 beds booked over a month. The PR campaign had three objectives to meet this: a) Create awareness of the Art Series Hotels b) Drive people to the web site c) Get people to book a room The hotels attract an audience of young, hip, urban, professionals. They stay at the Hotels because they are luxurious, fashionable and offer a different artistic experience. (However, over summer we miss out on our normal business market). The campaign had to be cool, rooted in the world of art, and something they would want to talk about.

Results

Drive awareness via PR: The Art series Hotels was in the public eye like never before, generating unprecedented awareness for their offering. The campaign achieved massive coverage domestically across print, radio, online publications, blogs and was picked up around the world (61 countries) with an estimated value of $2.1million. In social media it accumulated 3083 campaign mentions with an estimated reach of 6.7 million in twitter alone. Website visits: The PR and social coverage drove more than 105,000 visitors to the hotel website (an increase of 112%). Room Bookings: The campaign ultimately led to more than 1500 beds being sold in four weeks exceeding our briefed target of 1000 by 50% and generating a 300% return on investment. To quote Art Series Hotel CEO Will Deague, Steal Banksy was 'By far the best campaign we've ever done.'

Execution

We launched with a media event that set out the challenge and showed off the Banksy. The terms outlined by lawyers set out the rules for the game but were also written in the spirit of what a good art heist should be all about Rule 2. Be cool. Art thieves are always cool Rule 19. Oceans 11 jokes will not be tolerated. The art was GPS tracked, so we could contact the successful thief and verify its authenticity. There were regular social media updates and video footage releases of failed attempts. We also stimulated conversations by reaching out to the most active social media commentators and journalists, proffering tips/insider information. Journalists even documented their attempts via mainstream media and twitter. The original Banksy was eventually stolen and we leveraged that for a further round of PR coverage. With the public still interested we hung another Banksy and started again.

The Situation

On a small budget ($80,000) the campaign needed to create maximum PR to sell 1000 beds over summer. We needed to use PR to drive visits to the website and room bookings between 15 December to 15 January. This is Art Series Hotels quiet month (no business travel). There were no big events, sporting or cultural happenings in Melbourne for that month (and the 3 days over New Years Eve were excluded from the promotion!)

The Strategy

Our strategy was to create a campaign that evolved over time with fresh points of interest to talk about, via the provocative territory of art theft. We wanted Steal Banksy to become a piece of social currency and thanks to Banksy's local profile and to the many heist movies in popular culture we knew we had a rich territory to stimulate discussion. As the campaign evolved we released clues to the art's whereabouts along with CCTV footage of failed attempts, which drove fresh conversations and maintained intrigue. Finally we planned to amplify the ultimately successful theft. As hoped, our successful thieves were devious enough that the heist was a compelling story in its own right.