Savvy Marriott Bonvoy members look forward to the biannual Global Promotion more than any other moment in the year for the unparalleled opportunity to maximize their points. Unfortunately, many members don’t understand the benefit of registering for this promotion. They are used to seeing creative that wasn’t developed specifically for social media and tend to scan content without digesting the potential benefits of registering. Marriott sought to make members, who either haven’t heard of the Global Promotion or don’t understand its value, stop scrolling and take notice of this rich offer.
In Q3 of 2023, Marriott Bonvoy planned to launch its second Global Promotion of the year. It would be called “Go Your Way” and it would give members the chance to earn 1,500 bonus points for each stay plus another 3,000 bonus points for every three different hotel brands they stayed with during the promotional period.
Marriott’s goal was to develop social-first creative concepts that encouraged users to join the program, register for the promotion, and experience different brands within the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio as part of the "Go Your Way” Global Promotion.
Marriott sought to:
Increase awareness and consideration of Marriott Bonvoy and its portfolio of hotel brands.
Drive trial of Marriott Bonvoy and portfolio of brands.
Encourage sign-ups for Marriott Bonvoy among non-members.
Drive positive sentiment about Global Promotion.
Marriott took a social-first approach to the creative for a decades-old promotional concept. They shifted work to Marriott Bonvoy’s social media agency of record for the first time ever, grounding the work in social strategy, language, and visual identity with the goal of driving engagement and awareness. Old campaign creative all aligned heavily with traditional email advertising, so Marriott chose to lean into native platform features instead. This included prioritizing 9:16 video formats, using user-generated content from real travelers from Marriott Bonvoy’s portfolio of hotels, on-screen text, music, strong branding, and a hook in the first three seconds. This approach resulted in a refreshed campaign look and feel that resonated with Marriott’s current and new audiences on social channels, instead of retrofitting traditional campaign content into a social mold.
Marriott knew that they weren’t the only brand offering a global members-only offer at a regular cadence in the year, but they still had to stand out from competitors in the loyalty promotions landscape. Marriott took an audit of competitors’ Global Promotion content and found whitespace in marrying traditional loyalty promotional messaging with social-first tactics.
Since Global Promotion is not a new concept for Marriott Bonvoy or similar loyalty programs, Marriott knew they needed to develop promotion-based content that captured users’ attention quickly and “edutained” new audiences. Particularly for Marriott Bonvoy’s Insiders Facebook Group, Marriott needed this content to stand out and catch the attention of members who are used to seeing the same kind of Global Promotion content year after year. They customized copy and creative to speak to their highly engaged members in a “non-marketing” way. Marriott also took learnings and insights from previous global promotion paid media campaigns and made platform-specific optimizations based on those learnings.
Marriott Bonvoy far outperformed all goals associated with their Q3 Global Promotion. The goal was not just to drive enrollments and bookings, but also to update the dated versions of supporting social content to have them better align with in-platform norms. Marriott Bonvoy launched social content on two new platforms (Threads and TikTok) for the first time with the Q3 promotion.
With the “Go Your Way” promotion, Marriott achieved the following goals:
Increased awareness and consideration of Marriott Bonvoy and its portfolio of hotel brands – Achieved 17M reach (580% increase versus Q1 2023 reference campaign)
Drove trial of Marriott Bonvoy and portfolio of brands – Achieved by incentivizing members to try new hotel brands with a 3,000-point bonus for staying with three different brands.
Encouraged sign-ups for Marriott Bonvoy among non-members – Achieved a more than 100% increase in enrollment compared to past Global Promotions.
Drove positive sentiment about Global Promotion – Positive sentiment increased 120% between the Q1 and Q3 promotions on social media.
