In 2023, Marriott Bonvoy sought to increase their portfolio brand perception by creating engaging content that reached their Next Generation Experience Seeker target audience. Marriott Bonvoy is always looking to engage with the passion points of their members and target audience, and music was identified as one of those key passion points. The opportunity to partner with Billboard to become the presenting partner for the 2023 Billboard Music Awards helped Marriott Bonvoy to align themselves with a tentpole moment in music and expand their presence in the cultural conversation.
The goals of the partnership between Marriott Bonvoy and Billboard were to drive brand awareness, relevance, and favorability among young travelers on social media by reimagining one of the biggest cultural moments in music—the Billboard Music Awards.
Marriott decided to determine their success in achieving:
Brand awareness and affiliation with Billboard, measured by social media and digital impressions on Billboard and Marriott Bonvoy channels.
Brand relevance among their target audience of music lovers, measured by a brand lift study.
Brand favorability among young travelers, measured by a brand lift study.
In 2023, the BBMAs took on a digital-first, pre-recorded format for the first time. Marriott Bonvoy was the presenting partner of the show, resulting in brand exposure within all show content, a member-exclusive performance experience, and two acceptance speeches filmed at hotels within the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio. Across all partnership touchpoints, Marriott Bonvoy sought to showcase the diverse offerings and energies of the three Marriott Bonvoy portfolio hotel brands featured (Moxy Hotels, Tribute Portfolio, W Hotels) and cultivate affiliation between those hotel brands and Marriott Bonvoy.
The presenting partnership was holistic and integrated, including not only performance and acceptance speech tapings, but also five one-of-a-kind Marriott Bonvoy Moments experiences, the capture of more than ten behind-the-scenes social assets for Instagram, YouTube and TikTok, two high-impact Billboard.com digital takeovers, and featured mentions across six Billboard editorial segments and articles. A dual-brand partnership logo was also included in all show promotions, resulting in added social buzz and talent amplification, as well as strong partnership memorability.
Marriott Bonvoy collaborated with Billboard to engage singer Tate McRae for an exclusive hosted performance of her hit single “greedy,” filming with her just days ahead of her SNL musical guest debut and capitalizing on her lightning-fast rise to fame within their target audience. The performance was aired as part of the show, featuring high-profile Marriott Bonvoy and Moxy Hotels branding placements.
Working with Billboard provided Marriott access to an audience of more than 15M social followers and more than 270M monthly unique site visitors. That audience helped the BBMAs to become the number one social program across all of TV and streaming on November 19, garnering nearly 300M cross-platform views in under 48 hours and more than 650M views to-date.
Marriott Bonvoy accumulated over 246M social media and digital impressions across all program content, achieving their goal of brand awareness. 15M of those views were on Marriott Bonvoy social channels and more than 925M additional media impressions were attributed to Marriott Bonvoy. Marriott benefitted from their association to the show, as demonstrated by these Kantar brand lift study results:
More than 50% of survey respondents reported that Marriott Bonvoy is “for someone like them.”
Nearly 50% of survey respondents indicated that the partnership with Billboard makes Marriott Bonvoy more relevant to them, achieving their goal of driving relevance among music lovers.
Marriott Bonvoy saw a 15 point lift in brand favorability, while all competitors in the comparison set saw a corresponding decline. This confirmed that Marriott achieved their goal of driving brand favorability among young travelers.
Anecdotally, Cody Rigsby, an influential Peloton instructor, mentioned the BBMAs and Marriott’s sponsored Tate McRae performance during one of his live classes, which can now be found in the Peloton library.
