ORLANDO \u2013 Marriott hotels knows a lot about what people talk about on social media and it\u2019s become \u201ca content machine\u201d fueled by data and technology. \u201cIn our work for Marriott, we talk about customer centricity all the time,\u201d says Tej Desai, Managing Partner at agency MEC.<\/p>\n

A year ago, Marriott itself comprised 19 different brands. Then came its acquisition<\/a> of Starwood Hotels and the combined brand tally now exceeds 30.<\/p>\n

\u201cBringing those brand perception levels higher to actually drive the right consumers into the purchase journey is key,\u201d Desai says in this interview with Beet.TV. \u201cSo we\u2019re helping them sort of reinvent that purchase journey to make sure it\u2019s connected from the top to the bottom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among other results for these efforts, Marriott and MEC picked up Gold and Silver Creative Data Lions at this year\u2019s Cannes International Festival of Creativity. The awards<\/a>, given to M Live\u2014Marriott International\u2019s global marketing real-time center\u2014were in the categories of Social Data and Use of Real-time Data.<\/p>\n

M Live is the touch point across all 30 Marriott brands used to identify pop culture trends and create real-time content directly with on-property guests on social channels based on geo-fencing technology.<\/p>\n

One benefit of working in the hotel category is that unlike insurance or packaged goods, which are often pitched as necessities, \u201cit\u2019s something you want to do. It\u2019s aspirational. You want to go on vacation,\u201d says Desai. \u201cWe have that to our advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a part of GroupM, MEC shares its digital brand safety standards and works with Marriott and other clients to build brand safety guidelines for global implementation \u201cto make sure that our ads aren\u2019t being seen where they shouldn\u2019t be seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

While he acknowledges that working with walled gardens like Facebook and Google \u201cis tough because they see a lot of our media spend,\u201d Desai says maintaining close partnerships with digital and traditional media providers produces learnings that can be applied \u201cacross the board.\u201d<\/p>\n

This video is part of a Beet.TV leadership series produced at the ANA Masters of Marketing Conference, 2017. The series is presented by FreeWheel. Please find more videos from Orlando, visit this page<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ORLANDO \u2013 Marriott hotels knows a lot about what people talk about on social media and it\u2019s become \u201ca content machine\u201d fueled by data and technology. \u201cIn our work for Marriott, we talk about customer centricity all the time,\u201d says Tej Desai, Managing Partner at agency MEC. A year ago, Marriott itself comprised 19 different […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[]},"categories":[6787],"tags":[5279,5287,5299,5267,3803,6322,6834,6835,6836],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48271"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48271\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}