Generally the hardest enterprise challenges encourage your most impactful content material.
That proved true for the content material crew at Marriott Worldwide. Annie Granatstein, vp of content material advertising, shared her model’s story across the pandemic-related decimation of journey – and the following reinvention – at Content material Advertising and marketing World.
The world’s habits had modified. Marriott’s target market had modified. That prompted step one of their content material reinvention – understanding their target market.
When your viewers’s habits modifications, it’s time for a content material reinvention, says @anniegranat by way of @GregLevinsky @CMIContent. #CMWorld Click on To Tweet
Exploring the viewers’s journey needs
Lower than a 12 months into the pandemic, pent-up demand for journey reached its apex. In response to U.S. members in a February 2021 Trivago survey:
- 48% would hand over their job to journey
- 38% would hand over intercourse to journey
- 25% would hand over their financial savings to journey
- 20% would hand over their accomplice to journey
These outcomes point out a primary have to journey – seemingly on the size of Maslow’s hierarchy of wants, Annie notes. Now, take into account a December 2020 Finder Survey during which 74% mentioned they needed to raised themselves – a 15% enhance over the earlier (pre-pandemic) 12 months. Lastly, take into account a February 2021 American Specific survey the place 59% of respondents mentioned they had been all for “philantourism,” the mix of philanthropy and tourism.
The journey viewers world seems to be completely different.
“Folks didn’t wish to simply return to 2019 and to the identical world,” Annie says. “They didn’t need issues to return to regular. They need a greater regular.”
@Marriott discovered vacationers needed a “higher regular.” A quote from Mark Twain impressed their new marketing campaign, says @anniegranat by way of @GregLevinsky @CMIContent. #CMWorld Click on To Tweet
However how may Marriott assist folks visualize a greater regular? This Mark Twain quote impressed them:
Journey is deadly to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and plenty of of our folks want it sorely on these accounts. Broad, healthful, charitable views of males and issues can’t be acquired by vegetating in a single little nook of the earth all one’s lifetime.
They opted to place journey as an antidote to the tough instances of 2020 and deliberate the Journey Makes Us marketing campaign.
Planning the journey content material technique
Not lengthy after the marketing campaign concept was shaped – in January 2021 – Annie joined Marriott. The advert marketing campaign was scheduled to launch in the summertime.
As the brand new content material advertising lead, it fell to her and the content material crew to translate the Journey Makes Us idea into content material.
They created the content material round three moments: viewers (have to journey), cultural (want to raised the world), and model (champion of an even bigger and higher world for all). They dubbed it the “regenerative journey” content material technique constructed on the “important want to return to journey to enhance ourselves, {our relationships}, and our world.”
The technique encompassed 4 journey storytelling pillars: self, relationships, neighborhood, and world. The tales appeared on Marriott’s owned editorial and social media channels and third-party publishing companions’ websites.
@Marriott’s regeneration #ContentStrategy was constructed round three storytelling pillars – self, relationships, neighborhood, and world, says @anniegranat by way of @GregLevinsky @CMIContent. #CMWorld Click on To Tweet
Owned editorial
In implementing the regenerative journey content material technique, they printed content material to assist folks learn to journey higher on their digital journal Marriott Bonvoy Traveler.
Among the many tip-driven articles: How To Be a Accountable – and Extra Conscious – Traveler and Make Journey Significant with 6 Regenerative Experiences Across the Globe. The interactive storytelling featured widescreen, cinematic, and interactive containers to captivate readers. Additionally they touched on subjects like supporting New York Metropolis’s LGBTQ+ areas and the tiny island the place vacationers may go for conservation and humanities.
“They confirmed the actually cool issues you may do to have a extra significant trip,” Annie says.
Bonvoy Traveler’s e-newsletter (the journal’s main distribution technique) that includes the extra significant journey tales skilled a 28% open charge, a lot increased than the norm.
Writer partnerships
Marriott collaborated with The Washington Submit Inventive Group to create an outlet for storytellers from underrepresented backgrounds to share how they journey higher.
They invited folks to use to be the subsequent nice journey storytellers on The Washington Submit’s web site and social media channels. The appliance course of proved fruitful. The storytellers had been then assigned “beats” primarily based on latest reader developments – less-traveled cities, nature locations with fewer folks, and connecting with locals.
“In case you’re working with publishing companions, get them to inform you what’s trending on their channels with their viewers,” Annie says.
Marriott selected these storytellers and angles to cowl:
- Charlotte Simpson, “The Touring Black Widow,” who took up solo journey after her husband’s loss of life, wrote about visiting Buffalo, New York, for the so-called “second cities” beat.
- Jaylyn Gough, a member of the Navajo Nation and founding father of Native Girls’s Wilderness, wrote about returning to the reservation the place she was born however not the place she grew up. Her nature-off-the-beaten-path content material tied in with readers’ want to seek out much less crowded locations to discover nature.
- Jeff Jenkins, founding father of the net neighborhood Chubby Diaries and a passionate advocate for plus-size vacationers, went to the Florida Keys to be taught from the locals methods to scuba dive and replant coral within the reefs off Key Largo.
Every story included a mix of textual content, pictures, videography, and audio. However the content material didn’t finish there. To achieve Gen Z, they printed TikToks aplenty.
@washingtonpost #advert What’s regenerative journey? @MarriottBonvoy member @chubbydiaries breaks it down. #TravelMakesUs #TikTokTravel ♬ authentic sound – We’re a newspaper.
The metrics show the sponsored content material partnership’s success. As Annie experiences:
- 90% of readers supposed to take motion with Marriott
- 80% agree Marriott gives an inclusive atmosphere
- 28% of TikTok customers recall seeing Marriott Bonvoy content material
Marriott labored with Vox Media to create content material targeted on schooling, inspiration, and motion. It resulted in an explainer video concerning the science of journey and the way it improves folks’s minds and feelings, private tales about journey sparking creativity, and an interactive quiz to assist folks plan a visit primarily based on science with Marriott.
Don’t go for protected when instances get powerful
Adversity could have a unfavourable impact in your content material advertising technique, however it may be became a optimistic once you rethink what you’re creating and who you’re creating it for.
“When shit hits the fan, corporations typically may be scared to say something and go actually protected,” Annie says. “We did the precise reverse, and it labored.”
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Cowl picture by Joseph Kalinowski/Content material Advertising and marketing Institute
