Dive Brief:

• Marriott International has launched “Golden Rule,” a category marketing campaign that features four of its brands — Courtyard by Marriott, Fairfield Inn & Suites, Four Points by Sheraton and SpringHill Suites — together for the first time, per a press release.
• The idea behind the campaign is to leverage Marriott’s collective strength through its “classic select” brands that represent more than one-third of its 30-brand portfolio. The connection between the four brands is service that is rooted in human connections, which is the basisfor the “Golden Rule” messaging.
• The campaign appears on multiple screens, including cinema, broadcast, in-flight and mobile, according to the press release. It is launching in the U.S. and will expand internationally into Canada next month. It will also have a digital-only content element with stories about real Marriott employees and guests shared on a dedicated campaign landing page and social media platforms. As part of the effort, Marriott is creating a docu-series celebrating altruism that is slated for later this fall.

Dive Insight:

The Marriott campaign is the latest indicator that brands are viewing video marketing as a category of its own with the goal to reach a variety of screens instead of thinking about video as either linear TV or digital. Marriott International has been a leader in innovative content marketing such as large-scale storytelling via its “Two Bellmen” branded short film series and tapping Snapchat for an unscripted original series.

By bringing together four Marriott brands under a single theme, this likely enables the company to put more resources against the effort than it could for any of these brands on an individual basis. Marriott recognizes that it needs a cross-screen approach and to deliver quality content to meet consumers high expectations these days. The challenge will be providing each brand with a strong enough personality on its own to drive bookings. 

The Golden Rule campaign points to Marriott's willingness to take risks and try new approaches, an approach that has made it a leader in digital marketing. Starwood Preferred Guest, a hotel loyalty program run by Marriott, recently updated its smartphone application to provide mobile check-in at 22 U.S. hotels, the latest mobile check-in deployment by Marriott. The company was also an early adopter of iMessage apps.