To disrupt and expand the current perception and role of what a community management team does, Marriott launched M Live, a global, realtime social monitoring center that attracts, connects with, and engages consumers. M Live's efforts have helped Marriott engage with thousands of users across social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Weibo.
Objective and Context:
Through personalized engagements and integration into trending pop culture moments, M Live, Marriott Global Marketing’s real-time content platform, not only reaches consumers via mobile marketing efforts, but elicits emotional responses in real time to keep Marriott brands top-of-mind among nextgen travelers.
Target Audience:
The focus for this effort targeted next-generation travelers, who prefer experiences over material goods and are on track to spend $1.4 trillion on travel each year by 2020.
Creative Strategy:
M Live identified key touchpoints that engage its audience and drive interest among unengaged consumers. Through its innovative geo-fencing technology, HYP3R, M Live identified missed on-property engagement opportunities where guests were posting about their experiences via mobile but not tagging the brand. M Live took that insight to provide daily engagement opportunities to the brands. For instance, when a guest was staying at the JW Marriott Mumbai and posted to her Instagram channel praising the charmingly-folded towel animals the cleaning staff left behind, M Live took notice and reached out the JW Brand team and the property itself.
M Live has been able to successfully drive reach and awareness of Marriott through influencer outreach and earned PR coverage of trending moments. For example, through the new social listening tools, M Live identified an influential NFL sportswriter who was enjoying his honeymoon at an Autograph Collection property in Greece. The influencer tweeted his positive sentiment around Marriott Rewards points and the beauty of the property. M Live immediately reached out to the property in Greece to provide a surprise-and-delight moment for the influencer to entice additional social sharing.
Mobile Execution:
While initially vetting the idea of surprise-and-delights, M Live gathered data by leveraging tools from vendors like Sysomos, Percolate, Sprinklr, Tickr, and HYP3R to understand how guest post their travel experiences. Each of these tools allowed the team varying perspectives into how users were engaging with the content on property. HYP3R showcased how guests at Marriott’s 6,000 hotels were sharing related content while Percolate offered a chance to prepare competitive analysis. Sysomos allowed the team to dig deeper to measure potential reach, defining the true value of a broader activation.
The M Live platform has earned Marriott over 54,600 total engagements with guests on Instagram, Twitter, and Weibo. This number includes more than 15,600 comments plus the 1,810 guests who followed the brands after commenting, and also includes where M Live content producers and guests engaged with posts over 27,000 times. In addition, guests approved more than 1,500 user-generated content requests.
One hundred percent of the reactions to the real-time activations have been positive. Eighty-two percent of engaged guests make an effort to follow Marriott on social media, post at them again, or comment mentioning them.
