希尔顿逸林酒店社交网络宣传的成与败

    我写道“我希望飞行旅程中少点儿颠簸”。她鼓励我把对话气泡磁力贴贴到柜台的侧面去，那里确实已经满是人们的回馈：房间里该设置iPhone充电器；用微笑欢迎我；放上一个冷水瓶吧。来自凯旋公关公司的卡利斯勒•坎贝尔表示：“人们很喜欢这个活动，他们的答案无所不包，从软点儿的枕头到免费无线网络信号再到热辣的空姐。”

    当然，逸林酒店不可能给你提供“热辣空姐”，因为它终究不是家民航公司。免费无线网络倒是可以提供，可现在逸林还真没有做到：在休息室、公共空间都有免费信号，贵宾俱乐部成员也可随时免费上网，但普通旅客在房间里还是享受不到。全国宣传之旅后，逸林收到的绝大多数答案都是要求无线网络（包括当面提交的回馈和Twitter消息），那是否真的会在所有房间免费提供呢？坎贝尔只肯说：“旅行之后，我们肯定会评估人们想要什么，或许还会作出调整。”

    公允地说，此类活动的目的并非真是要改善酒店，而是向世人宣告自己的存在。对带着女友从丹麦来到纽约的26岁旅客雅各布•斯科乔尔德-乔金森来说，这一招颇有成效。“蒂蒂！”他一边叫着女友一边钻进帐篷，“巧克力曲奇！”雅各布猜测道：“他们或许是想要吸引新顾客，曲奇很不错。”

    曲奇确实不错，可没人能保证这会让某个旅客下次订酒店的时候这么想：“啊，我应该住在逸林酒店，他们的曲奇很不错呢。”或许吧，再说25美元的礼品卡更加实在、更有诱惑力。到了下午5点活动结束时，为当天准备的1万块曲奇几乎已经发光了（另有200块昨晚烤完就送到了附近的麦当劳叔叔之家，这是逸林酒店本地慈善合作伙伴中最近的一家）。

    哈瓦斯（Havas）公司首席执行官戴维•琼斯在他关于社交媒体与公司责任的著作《有心者胜》中指出，在如今这个“极为透明”的新营销世界，企业必须牢记，“关注再也买不到了，你必须努力去挣。”周三这天，逸林酒店肯定算得上在熙熙攘攘的熨斗区赢得了行人的关注。从芝加哥来纽约的迈克尔•胡说：“这事儿看起来太奇怪了，我得看看咋回事才行”。

    可它真在Twitter——整个营销活动的引擎——上获得了关注吗？这一整天，Twitter与#littlethings活动有关的消息大多都是逸林自己的账户或者与活动有关的公关人员所发，其他人自发的信息少之又少。况且，#littlethings在Twitter上是个很常用的标签，人们可能用它来描述当天过得怎么样或是发点小牢骚。

    I wrote down "I'd like less turbulence on flights." She encouraged me to stick the magnetic speech bubble onto the side of the counter, which indeed was covered in responses: iPhone charger in the room, greet me with a smile, cold water bottle waiting. Carlisle Campbell, from PR-firm Ketchum, exclaimed: "People are loving this, and the answers have been everything from a softer pillow to free wi-fi to a hot flight attendant."

    Of course, your hotel can't offer you a "hot flight attendant" because, well, it's not an airline. What it can offer you is free wi-fi, but DoubleTree, for now, does not: it's free in the lobby, in public spaces, and to its Honors club members, but not in rooms. After this whirlwind tour, with the vast majority of answers (both in-person and on Twitter) being requests for wi-fi, is it likely DoubleTree will begin offering it free in all rooms? Campbell would only say, "After the tour, we will definitely be assessing what people want and, perhaps, making changes."

    To be fair, the point of a bonanza like this isn't really to improve the hotels, but to announce to people that they exist. That part worked on Jakob Skjold-Jorgensen, 26, a tourist visiting New York from Denmark with his girlfriend. "Titte!" he yelled to her after ducking inside the tent, "Chocolate chip cookie!" Jakob guessed, "They're probably trying to fetch new customers. The cookie is good."

    A cookie is indeed good, but it's no guarantee it will lead someone to think, when they next book a trip, 'Ah, I should stay at a DoubleTree, they have those nice cookies." But maybe. And the $25 gift card is a more concrete enticement. 10,000 cookies prepared for the day were almost all gone by quitting time at 5 p.m. (Some 200 more were baked for delivery to the local Ronald McDonald House last night, which was the nearest DoubleTree hotel's local charity of choice.)

    In Who Cares Wins, a book about social media and corporate responsibility, Havas CEO David Jones posits that in the new marketing world of "radical transparency," companies should remember that, "attention can no longer be bought. It must be earned." Certainly on Wednesday DoubleTree earned the attention of pedestrians in the crowded Flatiron district. Michael Hu, visiting from Chicago, said, "This thing looked so weird I had to come check it out."

    But did it gamer attention on Twitter, the engine fueling this entire effort? Throughout the day, there were very few organic tweets about the #littlethings campaign that did not come from DoubleTree's account or from PR people associated with the effort. In addition, #littlethings is a rather common hashtag across Twitter, used by people to express anything from how their day went to petty aggravations.