Generally the hardest enterprise challenges encourage your most impactful content material.
That proved true for the content material staff at Marriott Worldwide. Annie Granatstein, vp of content material advertising and marketing, shared her model’s story across the pandemic-related decimation of journey – and the next reinvention – at Content material Advertising and marketing World.
The world’s habits had modified. Marriott’s audience had modified. That prompted step one of their content material reinvention – understanding their audience.
When your viewers’s habits adjustments, 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 wishes
Lower than a 12 months into the pandemic, pent-up demand for journey reached its apex. Based on 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 associate to journey
These outcomes point out a fundamental must journey – seemingly on the size of Maslow’s hierarchy of wants, Annie notes. Now, contemplate a December 2020 Finder Survey during which 74% mentioned they wished to higher themselves – a 15% enhance over the earlier (pre-pandemic) 12 months. Lastly, contemplate a February 2021 American Specific survey the place 59% of respondents mentioned they had been considering “philantourism,” the mix of philanthropy and tourism.
The journey viewers world seems to be completely different.
“Individuals didn’t need 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 wished 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 individuals visualize a greater regular? This Mark Twain quote impressed them:
Journey is deadly to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and lots of of our individuals 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 troublesome instances of 2020 and deliberate the Journey Makes Us marketing campaign.
Planning the journey content material technique
Not lengthy after the marketing campaign thought was fashioned – in January 2021 – Annie joined Marriott. The advert marketing campaign was scheduled to launch in the summertime.
As the brand new content material advertising and marketing lead, it fell to her and the content material staff to translate the Journey Makes Us idea into content material.
They created the content material round three moments: viewers (must journey), cultural (need to higher 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 need 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 revealed content material to assist individuals 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 packing containers to captivate readers. In addition 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 can do to have a extra significant trip,” Annie says.
Bonvoy Traveler’s e-newsletter (the journal’s major distribution methodology) that includes the extra significant journey tales skilled a 28% open fee, a lot greater than the norm.
Writer partnerships
Marriott collaborated with The Washington Submit Artistic Group to create an outlet for storytellers from underrepresented backgrounds to share how they journey higher.
They invited individuals to use to be the subsequent nice journey storytellers on The Washington Submit’s web site and social media channels. The applying course of proved fruitful. The storytellers had been then assigned “beats” based mostly on current reader traits – less-traveled cities, nature locations with fewer individuals, and connecting with locals.
“If you happen to’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 demise, 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 Ladies’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’ need to seek out much less crowded locations to discover nature.
- Jeff Jenkins, founding father of the web neighborhood Chubby Diaries and a passionate advocate for plus-size vacationers, went to the Florida Keys to be taught from the locals how you can 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 revealed 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 stories:
- 90% of readers supposed to take motion with Marriott
- 80% agree Marriott supplies an inclusive surroundings
- 28% of TikTok customers recall seeing Marriott Bonvoy content material
Marriott labored with Vox Media to create content material centered on schooling, inspiration, and motion. It resulted in an explainer video in regards to the science of journey and the way it improves individuals’s minds and feelings, private tales about journey sparking creativity, and an interactive quiz to assist individuals plan a visit based mostly on science with Marriott.
Don’t go for protected when instances get powerful
Adversity could have a unfavorable impact in your content material advertising and marketing technique, however it may be was a optimistic if you rethink what you’re creating and who you’re creating it for.
“When shit hits the fan, corporations typically might 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
