Marriott International: Becoming a Media Company
Using storytelling to engage consumers, the largest hotel chain in the world, managed also to become one of the most successful media companies.
Marriott International, Inc. is a leading global lodging company with more than 6,700 properties across 130 countries and territories, reporting revenues of more than $22 billion in fiscal year 2017. Founded by J. Willard and Alice Marriott and guided by family leadership for more than 90 years, the company is headquartered outside of Washington, D.C. in Bethesda, Maryland.
An undoubtedly prosperous but also never resting company, Marriott was always in search of new ways to create strong and long lasting relationships with the costumers.
The idea
About ten years ago a woman, who knew very well the power of a good story, walked into Bill Marriott’s office with an idea. Kathleen Matthews, the hotel giant’s executive vice president of communications, who had already spent 25 years as a reporter and news anchor for ABC News, suggested that Marriott should have a blog and she wanted Bill Marriott, then 76 years old, to write it. Although his first response was: “Why the heck would anyone want to read a blog from me?”, Matthews quickly convinced him that he was the best person to tell the company’s story and so Marriott’s digital storytelling journey began.
It started with those simple blog posts, but before long, they were operating a full-fledged global media company. In the next three years, Marriott launched a popular digital travel magazine, Marriott Traveler, that covers cities from Seattle to Seoul. It has built content studios on five different continents and even won Emmys for its short films Two Bellmen and French Kiss.
Becoming a Media Company
In 2013 Marriott hired Karin Timpone from the Walt Disney Company so she could connect the company to the “next generation of travelers”. In June 2014, David Beebe, also working for Disney, followed Timpone. The pair did an amazing work fast, so by 2015 Marriott had created a successful TV show, The Navigator Live, a short film, The Two Bellmen, an online travel magazine, and even ventures into virtual reality with Oculus Rift. The projects generated immediate success, from high engagement metrics to millions in direct revenue and even content licensing deals. By September 2014, Marriott also had announced the launch of a global content studio.
By 2015, two more media veterans started working for Marriott: Matthew Glick from CBS as the senior director of the Creative & Content Global Marketing Group and Marc Graser, formerly of Variety, as editorial director.
“We hired a lot of media, took a lot of people who were previously storytellers and turned them into marketers” — David Beebe
M Live Studio
Along with the right people the company needed also to create the ideal environment in which the best stories would flourish. For this reason, in October 2015 M Live was launched. This grand content studio had nine screens, showing everything from the social media campaigns of Marriott’s 19 brands to real-time booking information to Marriott’s editorial calendar. Each seat in the glass room represents a different department such as PR/Comms, Social Media, Buzz Marketing, Creative & Content, and even one for MEC, a media-buying agency that amplifies well-performing content at a moment’s notice.
“We did not get this far by saying, “I want to build a media company”. First and foremost, [the goal] is to engage consumers. Get them to associate with our brands, build lifetime value with them. Content’s a great way to do that.” -David Beebe
Soon, Marriott managed to scale M Live across the globe, with installments in Hong Kong, London, Dubai and Miami.
The key to success
The vice president of global creative explains that what made Marriott such a successful brand also in media industry is the three Cs. “Scaling content, then building a community around that content, and driving commerce,” Beebe said. He believes that this combination is the key to reaching millennials who are increasingly seeking more intimate connections and experiences when they travel. “We have a very intimate relationship with our customers. They sleep with us, after all. It’s sort of a joke, but it’s true,” he said.
Marriott’s success story relies on the fact that they managed to build a great culture of storytelling, using stories to build relationships and make people care.
A touch of Hollywood
Marriott’s films are driving commerce as well.
TWO BELLMEN is the first original short film production from Marriott International. The iconic JW Marriott property plays a starring role in the film.
The film represents the boldest move yet by Marriott International to use narrative storytelling and entertainment to elevate its portfolio of brands. It had such a huge success that two more movies (TWO BELLMEN 2 &3) were released within the next few years.
The company filmed its second short, FRENCH KISS, in Paris, at a Marriott hotel. Since it was released, FRENCH KISS has been viewed over 6 million times on YouTube. Perhaps more impressively, a bookings promotion related to the film also drove $500,000 in revenue for the hotel.
“The reason we did that one was to tell a great story, but also to inspire people to travel,” Beebe said. “Hopefully, if we do that over and over again, they’ll think of Marriott when they go to book to stay in Paris. We created content, we created community around it, and then we’re actually driving commerce against it”.
