Don’t Make the Content Suck: The Marriott Approach To Content Marketing Domination

Mar­riott uses tech­nol­o­gy to pro­vide infor­ma­tion­al and enter­tain­ing con­tent at the right moments, in the right con­text, on the right screen.

Lisa Lacy By Lisa Lacy. Join the discussion » 0 comments

Conde Nast Trav­el­er, Trav­el + Leisure, etc. take note: Mar­riott is on a mis­sion to become the world’s largest pub­lish­er of trav­el con­tent. And the brand is doing so in part with a new con­tent stu­dio to con­nect with “next-gen­er­a­tion trav­el­ers” and to cre­ate so-called 360-degree expe­ri­ences.

While Mar­riott is a brand that nat­u­ral­ly inspires plen­ty of user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent and can use said con­tent to tell brand­ed sto­ries, Mar­riott also sells an expe­ri­ence it can’t always con­trol from an exec­u­tive lev­el because of fac­tors as unpre­dictable as employ­ees or con­sumers in bad moods on a giv­en day.

That’s accord­ing to feed­back from David Beebe, vice pres­i­dent of glob­al cre­ative and con­tent mar­ket­ing at Mar­riott Inter­na­tion­al, at an Adver­tis­ing Week pan­el. At the end of the day, Beebe said, when it comes to con­tent mar­ket­ing, the advice he gets from Mr. Mar­riott him­self is: “Don’t make the con­tent suck.” So how does the hotel brand do that? For one, Mar­riott uti­lizes tech­nol­o­gy to pro­vide con­tent at the right moment and on the right screen, Beebe said. “When look­ing for a place to go, how do I deliv­er con­tent that’s rel­e­vant and say, ‘Oh, by the way, we sell hotel rooms, why don’t you stay with us?’” Beebe said. The brand recent­ly made a high-tech move to appeal to the next gen­er­a­tion of trav­el­ers, part­ner­ing with visu­al effects com­pa­ny Frame­store to cre­ate a 4D vir­tu­al real­i­ty trav­el expe­ri­ence with Ocu­lus Rift tech­nol­o­gy.

It also launched its own con­tent stu­dio, which will cre­ate dig­i­tal con­tent across film, tele­vi­sion, online, and print plat­forms. Mar­riott says its stu­dio includes teams respon­si­ble for: cre­ative and snack­able trav­el lifestyle con­tent; episod­ic sto­ry-dri­ven con­tent; and real-time cre­ative and con­tent around trend­ing top­ics, con­ver­sa­tions, and events on social media. That means dif­fer­ent kinds of con­tent with vary­ing lengths of engage­ment. “For us, it’s lit­er­al­ly just get­ting start­ed,” Beebe said. It’s all about pro­vid­ing “infor­ma­tion and enter­tain­ment at the right time and in the right con­text,” he added. To that end, the brand has part­nered with entre­pre­neur and trav­el vlog­ger Sonia Gil of Sonia’s Trav­els, music and move­ment group Sub­stance Over Hype, which will pro­duce an orig­i­nal short film, “Two Bell­men”; self-described media empress Shi­ra Lazar, who will bring audi­ences pop­u­lar videos, trends and per­son­al­i­ties on YouTube and social media; and musi­cal come­di­an, actress and con­tent cre­ator Taryn South­ern.

The project will also include The Nav­i­ga­tor Live, a Renais­sance Hotels TV series in dis­tri­b­u­tion on AXS TV, pro­duced in part­ner­ship with AEG, which will com­bine live per­for­mances by indie music artists dis­cov­er­ing new expe­ri­ences on the road; and Mar­riott Rewards’ Year of Sur­pris­es, a series of 12 webisodes pre­mier­ing in Octo­ber. “We’re now posi­tion­ing our­selves as the world’s largest trav­el com­pa­ny,” Beebe said. “Between our plat­form and part­ner plat­forms, we can become the world’s largest pub­lish­er of trav­el con­tent.” Beebe said Mar­riott under­stands con­sumers want to inter­act with con­tent, which dri­ves com­merce. If the brand sim­ply showed hotels or loca­tions, it wouldn’t be adding val­ue. So-called info­tain­ment on YouTube that dri­ves back to Marriott.com isn’t enough either. Instead, Mar­riott is using a total­ly dif­fer­ent approach, Beebe said. That’s because brands must cut through a lot of clut­ter and real­ize there’s a val­ue exchange in con­tent mar­ket­ing. And, for that rea­son, it’s impor­tant to think about what the con­sumer wants first, Beebe said.

At the same time, con­sumers don’t always know what they want, so brands need to leave room for exper­i­men­ta­tion, he added. Brands must also devel­op cre­ative with emo­tion­al trig­gers. “It’s test and learn, but I think we can own the entire trav­el jour­ney and we’re not afraid to go out and try it,” Beebe said. Mar­riott con­tent mar­ket­ing also includes a pre-exist­ing effort, Trav­el Bril­liant­ly, a mul­ti-year mar­ket­ing cam­paign that includes TV, dig­i­tal, and mobile adver­tis­ing, “enhanced” social media plat­forms and the Trav­el Bril­liant­ly web­site, which includes a co-cre­ation plat­form to solic­it user-gen­er­at­ed ideas. Accord­ing to Mar­riott, the cam­paign “reflects the lifestyle of the next gen­er­a­tion of trav­el­ers, who seam­less­ly blend work and play in a mobile and glob­al world.” “We co-cre­ate and curate,” Beebe said. “It’s across the trav­el spec­trum and jour­ney. It’s not just stay­ing in the hotel, it’s where to go, what to eat and the full 360-degree cycle.”

Lisa Lacy

Written by Lisa Lacy

Lisa is a senior features writer for Inked. She also previously covered digital marketing for Incisive Media. Her background includes editorial positions at Dow Jones, the Financial Times, the Huffington Post, AOL, Amazon, Hearst, Martha Stewart Living and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

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