Innovation at Marriott is called brand newsroom
Marriott International last month opened its M Live Asia Pacific real-time marketing and brand newsroom in Hong Kong, the company’s marketing HQ in the Asian region, after unveiling the M Live concept in Maryland, U.S. earlier last year, with plans for a global network. And they are practicing what they preach.
Three media veterans were hired to develop the U.S. post to see how much a hotel brand could capitalize on the fast-changing digital landscape. “We are a media company now,” said David Beebe, Marriott VP Global Creative. The company beefed up its in-house staff, bringing in people from Disney, CBS and Variety.
The studio brings together relevant marketing disciplines to track trends, performances and brand reputation on social media, while also proactively creating original content. By connecting their 16 brands to their own editorial calendar, it is creating relevance for their users. It's the way publishing houses have been making connection (and money) for decades, what brands didn't do. Until now.
“It’s customer-first thinking. That’s why a lot of brands can’t achieve what we’re doing. They think: ‘I can’t do that because someone is not going to like it.’ It gets very internal-political.” Beebe said, pinpointing the reason of slower pass of other brands in content marketing innovation.
In 2015, Marriott created a TV show, two short films, one of which we discussed in an earlier post (The Two Bellmen), a personalized online travel magazine, virtual reality with Oculus Rift and more. The projects generated some degree of success, from engagement metrics to content licensing deals.
The M Live Asia Pacific is the first to come on board outside the US. Planned launches in Europe, MidEast and Africa, and Caribbean and Latin America all are set for 2016. Although the succes analytics mentioned by M Live themselves seem strongly accelerated by their longing for succes and their marketing strategy, the brand newsroom actually does exist and produced output with aspirational level. Therefore it is a huge innovative step in brand storytelling, and will become a learning case for all brands trying to connect to their customers.
And for ourselves it might as well.