Younes Hospitality operates the Younes Conference Center in Kearney, NE, the largest conference center between Denver and Omaha, including seven hotels and another seven hotels throughout Nebraska. We were hired to help them gain an outsider’s perspective on their marketing.

The first step was a complete marketing audit of their brand and collateral and their previous advertising. We then developed a messaging and campaign strategy, redesigned their public-facing collateral, and created ads to support the campaign.

In our research, we discovered that their most significant strength is their employee retention. They are a family-run business and value their employees like they are a part of the family. They boast some of the industry’s best retention rates, and it shows in the experience and longevity of their staff.

Most conference and event advertising is pretty similar- a photo of empty event space, smaller images of hotel rooms and amenities, a plate of food, and a few local attractions. This kind of ad is so common that we refer to it as “wallpaper”. To stand out against the wallpaper, we decided to craft the campaign around Younes employees and their long careers and experience. Each Younes ad would end with a variation on the theme “our employees are the Younes Difference” often focusing on a single person.

We divided the campaign based on the targets: conference and event planners, and weddings. Based on our targets, we developed print ads for the conference planning audience and video for weddings – as most of our potential brides are on social media.

We directed two photo and video shoots (one conference and one wedding reception) to gather images for both campaigns and staff portraits and group shots. In the end, we produced a wide variety of ads for print, outdoor, digital, radio, broadcast, and social media.