Q & A - The Making of Award-Winning Marketing Campaign “ALL IN”

Oct 22, 2021 by Dominium

  

  

The ALL IN campaign represents Dominium’s united front against COVID-19 and its importance goes far beyond our company walls. It’s a commitment to keep each other safe and healthy, and an assurance that any action Dominium takes in response to the virus is with our constituents in mind. The campaign has mobilized everyone in the Dominium community—employees, residents, leadership, partners and investors—and encouraged resilience and solidarity during a time of crisis.

Originally created as a singular campaign to uplift the Dominium community during COVID, ALL IN now resembles an archipelago of marketing campaigns. It evolved and grew, responding to the myriad challenges presented by the virus. Each ancillary campaign—Hero of the Week; ALL IN for hiring talent; #FeelGoodFriday; The Great Comeback; Impact Updates—built upon Dominium’s original ALL IN commitment and tackled new COVID-born dilemmas as they arose, whether that be increasing our workforce or promoting positivity.

On Friday, September 24, ALL IN was awarded best Overall Marketing Campaign at the 2021 MADACS Awards. We interviewed Jordyn Kelly, Director of Marketing at Dominium, to learn more about what it took to create the award-winning ALL IN campaign. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

  

How did the ALL IN to combat COVID-19 campaign come to be?

We recognized a need to inspire collective action that promoted health, connectivity, perseverance and positivity within our Dominium community, our residents and, truly, the global community. We knew we could make an impact on the Dominium community, including the residents we serve. That’s what inspired the ALL IN campaign and what has been driving it ever since.

Who played a role in its creation?

It was absolutely a joint effort of the entire marketing team. Every single person has their creative DNA embedded into the creation and implementation of the campaign.

What were you hoping to accomplish by creating the campaign? What were the objectives?

It was to promote the good and create positivity in an otherwise very challenging time. It was to promote unity amidst social isolation and to champion our frontline essential workers, our site staff. And cultivate hope! It was also to provide our residents with activities and resources to help them manage their time and enjoy their homes while they’re in isolation. There was a lot of humanity and heart driving this campaign.

How did the project evolve as it went along, and did it evolve as COVID did?

Yeah, it absolutely did. It’s challenging to list out all the specific examples because there are so many, and it happened so organically. We were truly experiencing this as well – we, being the people behind this campaign. It organically evolved as we were responding to what was happening in the world – what was happening to us. Some of the bigger campaigns are good examples of that – the Great Comeback Campaign, Thank You, and Hero of the Week.

Talk a little more about those campaign offshoots. This campaign started with COVID but it’s an all-encompassing Dominium marketing campaign. How did those come about?

The ideation of all the ALL IN sub-campaigns were influenced by the times and inspired by the needs of our Dominium community. It was very dynamic. It wasn’t the typical corporate campaign where we said, ‘We want to increase our LinkedIn followers, or we need to increase occupancy.’ We were problem solving and reacting to an unprecedented time - flying blind like everyone else - trying to help and tackle the new challenges that were arising.

What were some of the important themes of ALL IN?

We kept it simple and welcoming to evoke stability amidst uncertainty. Our content and design had to encompass a large, diverse community of our colleagues and residents - as well as transcend the times. But at the core we had a goal, so it was easy to keep it grounded.

What was that core goal?

To create unity, connection, engagement and positivity. It was to connect with humanity and help people navigate the times.

ALL IN implies both a strong commitment and a united, group effort in the fight against COVID—how did the campaign engage a large portion of the Dominium community? How did you manage to reach everyone?

It was absolutely critical that it reached a large portion of the Dominium community, otherwise we would not have accomplished the goal of the campaign. In the interest of social distancing, we had to rely heavily on digital and social mediums to connection with the audiences. Fortunately, the digital and social platform was strong at the company level. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said across the board at the site level. So, the first steps were to build a digital and social infrastructure to support and nurture a virtual community at each site. Then, the hard work of growing the virtual communities through campaigns that ultimately gave our residents a reason to subscribe, follow, and engage.

How did you end up getting your message out there and connecting with people?

We primarily used social media, email, SMS, and signage to connect with the audiences.

Employees were reached through social media platforms, email, Dominium Connections, DominiumApartments.com, and company-wide and inter-department meetings.

Reaching our residents was more challenging given the need for social distancing restricted many of our established communication resources. We knew that the site teams’ engagement and commitment to ALL IN was paramount to successfully reaching our residents. So, we developed guides and resources for site teams to promote the campaign and engage with residents. Some examples of this are the Marketing Campaign Kit and several additional resources we made available on Marketing’s Dominium Connections [intranet] page.

How did you measure the campaign’s success?

It was very different from the typical KPIs we work towards – occupancy, applications, move-ins... Because this campaign was driven by compassion, care, and the wellbeing of our residents and colleagues, we weren’t marketing apartments, we were fostering hope. So, we measured the success of the campaign by things like colored paper hearts in windows and clapping for frontline essential workers as they drove by and socially distanced door-to-door happy hours.

Why do you think you were chosen to win the Overall Marketing Campaign category?

This one is a tough one to answer humbly! It was an incredible campaign that had incredibly talented and committed people behind it – it transcended. It would’ve been a hard one to beat.

Anything else you think is important to mention about the team? The campaign?

I have to give a major shoutout to every person in the marketing department. Truly, I work with the best group of individuals. They’re exceptional—could not be prouder to be part of that team. There is a quote that I love and has a lot of relevance in marketing: “Ideas are common; what is uncommon is the people who work to bring them about,” and that is so true. Everyone has ideas, ideas are the easy part; but the people that make it happen, that’s where the magic is.

I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the extraordinary efforts the site and Operations teams put forth to foster the success of this campaign as well.

The marketing team absolutely shares this award with every single colleague that engaged with and promoted the campaign in both big and small ways.