ZestPJ: A Success Story
Early this year we launched ZestPJ.com, a blog for the Food & Beverage outlets of the Hilton Petaling Jaya. Thanks to some great online-based marketing campaigns initiated by both the client and agency team, the blog has really taken off and now receives an average of a thousand unique visitors per day! (figures from 15 Jun – 15 Aug 2009).
We conceptualized the brand name and design of the site. To kick off the project, we brainstormed possible names with the client, and then developed the logo.
Zest: Full of life, relates to food. The splashes of colour reflect the themes of the food outlets at Hilton Petaling Jaya.
We built ZestPJ on the WordPress platform using a fully customized blog theme. This proved to be both cost-effective for the client and has been well-received by users. The client has experienced all the benefits of a blog, from creating their own blog posts to communicating directly with blog users and potential clients in a timely manner.
The blog contains individual pages for every restaurant and a page for promotions. The header for each page reflects the restaurants’ colour schemes and further acts as a mini photo gallery, displaying food photos from each restaurant.
Header banners: Gold for Genji…
…Red for Uncle Chilli’s…
…Yellow for Toh Yuen.
For the recent Bridal Fair event held on the 25th and 26th of July 2009, we set up a custom built page on the blog and used various marketing channels to drive traffic to this page. The results we highly successful – with only a 5% increase in marketing spend, Hilton PJ recorded a 197% increase in sales leads, of which online marketing accounted for more than 30% of total sales.
We also ran an online contest in conjunction with the Bridal Fair. The Picture Perfect Couple Contest called for photos of couples, which website visitors then voted for. The 25 couples with the highest votes won a weekend stay at the Hilton Petaling Jaya. The contest was a great success, with 168 entries in two weeks, thousands of votes cast and a significant spike in website traffic.
The Uncle Chilli’s bar is also enjoying the benefits of Hilton Petaling Jaya’s online presence through ZestPJ. They have held monthly theme parties – Bunnies Nite, Naughty Nurses and the upcoming Jungle Fever. Each event has been supported by blog and banner updates on the ZestPJ website, targeted Facebook advertisements and promoted on the Uncle Chilli’s Facebook group.
29,960 unique visitors between 27 July and 1 August, around the time of the Picture Perfect Couple contest and the Bunnies Nite Finale.
Of particular success was the Bunnies Nite Finale as revenue on the event night (a weekday) doubled. The client has also reported a slight shift in the crowd at the bar – in addition to the regulars, there are now more new faces at the bar, possibly an effect of our online efforts.
Hilton Petaling Jaya is taking their online efforts to a new level. Together with theQGuides.com, they hold regular Food Review events with food bloggers in Malaysia. Groups of bloggers are invited to the Hilton to dine and review the food at the various restaurants. Once the reviews are up on their websites, ZestPJ lists them in the Bloggers section of their website, thus increasing exposure for all websites involved. If you’re a food blogger and are keen to review, click here to visit the website and sign up.
The website is currently holding a Ramadhan promotion. Click here if you’d like a chance to win high tea at Paya Serai and a cooking class with Chef Noor Hisham, the Hilton’s Malay cuisine specialist.
The ZestPJ.com blog concept is a first for a Hilton in the South-East Asian region. Thanks to our forward-thinking clients and their willingness to venture into new territory, we’re proud to have ZestPJ on our portfolio of successes!
