BROOKMERE

Launching a Saratoga landmark

Brookmere is an 88-room estate resort set on nearly ten acres at the edge of Saratoga Springs, New York. Rising on the storied former Longfellows property, the hotel pairs timeless estate architecture with the Arbor Spa, the chef-driven Regent Restaurant & Bar, and grounds that run from manicured gardens to untouched wetlands. In spring 2024, with the property still an active construction site, Brookmere engaged Ruckus to carry it from blueprint to grand opening: the media strategy, the launch campaign, and every channel in between.

Starting from zero in a legacy market

Ruckus signed on to a construction site with no social accounts, no email list, no bookings engine, and nothing in market, six months before a December opening, in a town where hospitality legacies run generations deep. Saratoga trades on history and loyalty, so a newcomer could not simply show up; it had to feel of Saratoga from its very first post. Making it sharper, in June 2024 the Belmont Stakes would run at Saratoga for the first time in its history, the biggest hospitality moment in a generation, arriving six months before the doors opened.

The Belmont moment

Ruckus grounded the plan in a strategy workshop, stakeholder interviews, a community tour, competitive research with room-rate analysis across the Saratoga hotel set, and Day in the Life audience personas that traced how racing crowds and golfers actually move through media.

The launch campaign was timed to the Belmont Stakes' first Saratoga running: a cinematic sizzle video, a nine-tile social launch across Instagram and Facebook, branded swag, and a downtown pop-up with QR-driven paths to video, social, and swag. A pre-opening engine followed, with 12 posts and 12 stories a month backed by Meta and Google paid media, three newsletters carrying subscribers from first tease to opening offers, and quarterly content shoots and CGI showcases of the property rising, all tracked on custom real-time dashboards.

An audience built before the doors opened

A full digital engine had run for months before the front desk had a phone line, and it paid off. Between June 1 and November 26, 2024, Brookmere earned 474,426 impressions and 78,615 video views across Facebook and Instagram, all from channels Ruckus built from a standing start. The brand grew to 1,226 followers from zero. Reservations opened in August to an audience that already existed, and when Brookmere opened its doors that December, Saratoga was already watching.