InterContinental Hotels Group Partners with Communispace and Digitas to Harness the Voice of its Customers
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InterContinental Hotels Group Partners with Communispace and Digitas to Harness the Voice of its Customers
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Category: Worldwide - Industry economy -
Trends / Expert's advice
This is a press release selected by our editorial committee and published online for free on 2008-10-08
creator of online customer insight communities for more than 100 of the world’s leading brands, today announced that both IHG and its agency, Digitas, have benefitted from IHG's two highly successful Communispace communities. Digitas is among a vanguard of agencies that uses insights from its partners’ private online communities to transform the creative process. Both Digitas and IHG, the world’s largest hotel company by number of rooms, have leveraged the voice of IHG's customers to drive both business decisions and creative campaigns.
IHG's first private online community is comprised of 450 US loyalty program members of Priority Club Rewards, defined as frequent business travelers. Based on the success of the first community, IHG launched a second global community well over a year ago and most recently launched a third community devoted specifically to high-volume European travelers.
"By listening to our customers, we're able to engage in conversations that are more timely, meaningful and appealing to our travelers," said Ken Bott, director, global consumer marketing at IHG. "For example, our members were frustrated with carrying around multiple loyalty program cards, so partnering with Digitas we redesigned the back of our cards to allow room for membership numbers for other airline, hotel or car rental loyalty programs. The positive response to this easy change far exceeded our expectations and we would not have realized the opportunity without a direct ear to the open customer conversations that Communispace facilitates."
"Research is research, but what Communispace does is far more transformative," said Geoffrey Underwood, senior vice president of marketing at Digitas, Inc. "What we've learned from the community has paid incredible dividends for IHG. For example, community members suggested creative treatments that saved critical time to market for a recent stay-based promotion, which would have been difficult if Communispace wasn’t enabling IHG to listen to the voice of its customers."
IHG's Communispace communities have enabled the Digitas team to develop strong campaigns that resonate with IHG’s customers by incorporating the voice of IHG’s customers – literally - into the campaign process. "We consulted with the community while conceptualizing a ‘Backyard Barbeque’ promotion for one of the extended stay brands. Members not only validated the idea of social events for extended stay travelers, but they proactively exposed insight around regional differences in the definition of a barbeque or a cookout that enabled us to improve the creative concept and the brand to more effectively market the event," added Underwood.
“For nearly ten years, we've built communities for some of the world's most recognizable brands, such as IHG, and now we've started to build stronger relationships with their agencies,” said Diane Hessan, CEO of Communispace. “We now enjoy a strong working relationship with Digitas and have seen that when our community can become a catalyst for creativity and innovation between an agency and its client, everyone wins."
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