Advertising Spotlight: ‘Marriott Rewards Dynamic Ads for Moments’

HSMAI’s 2019 Adrian Awards competition will open in June — honoring creativity and innovation in hospitality advertising, digital marketing, and public relations. Take some inspiration from one of last year’s Platinum winners: Marriott Rewards, whose “Marriott Rewards Dynamic Ads for Moments” was honored in the Digital Marketing/Digital Campaign/Facebook Mobile Video Award category. (View all of last year’s Adrian-winning submissions here.

BACKGROUND: Marriott Rewards Moments creates once-in-a-lifetime moments for loyal customers. Past experiences include private dinners with celebrity chefs, suite seats at the Super Bowl, and backstage passes at some of the world’s premiere music festivals. The challenge Marriott Rewards faced was building awareness of the Moments platform while also increasing engagement with Elite members who have earned enough points to redeem. Marriott Rewards created a custom-built API, which feeds directly into video-rendering software, ensuring that Elite members can see Moments that are available for them to redeem in real time. The targeted ads ran on Facebook and directed users to the Moments website.

TARGET AUDIENCE: The campaign started with Marriott Rewards Elite members, who make up the top 10 percent of all Marriott Rewards Members. Elite members with more than 30,000 points were targeted to redeem their points, while Elite members with fewer than 30,000 points were targeted to build awareness of the platform. The audience was limited to members in the United States.

THE CAMPAIGN: Each video was 15 to 30 seconds long and featured three Moments, including more than 60 unique video clips sourced by sub-category and destination. Over the course of the five-week campaign, more than 1 million unique ads were rendered and displayed across Facebook. Marriott Rewards prioritized the first Moment shown in the ad to capture the attention of the user within the first three seconds using an attention-grabbing call-to-action. Ads refreshed every eight minutes and were optimized for the user based on key performance indicators (KPIs). The ads were optimized for mobile and utilized quick video rendering, so they played as expected.

RESULTS: When compared to previous campaigns, site visits increased by 81 percent, the click-through rate increased by 250 percent, bids increased by 33 percent, and redemptions increased by 60 percent. Dwell time was also 33 percent higher than industry benchmarks.


Categories: Marketing, Branding, Digital
Insight Type: Best Practices