Dive Brief:

• Moxy Hotels partnered with celebrity tattoo artist Megan Massacre to offer free tattoos to guests. The Marriott-owned hotel chain hosted its first pop-up tattoo studio at its location in Washington, D.C. in the spring, and another will take place June 25 at the Chattanooga, Tenn. location, followed by a pop-up at the hotel's new Atlanta midtown location this fall.
• The tattoo theme is based on Moxy's Blank Canvas art program, a contest for emerging artists to have their artwork featured in the permanent collection at a Moxy Hotel location. For the tattoo pop-up, Massacre has created designs exclusive to the Moxy hotel. The D.C. opening featured designs inspired by the work of Blank Canvas artist Rahul Jha, whose work is on display in Moxy D.C. The Moxy Chattanooga pop up will include tattoos inspired by the hotel's Blank Canvas artist Petra Braun.
• Moxy is also running a contest to find their next artist for the Atlanta location. The contest is calling on artists to win money to produce a piece for an Art Walk at the site. The hotel will use social media to promote the artist's work. Moxy is also hosting a Masterclass Series, in which customers can take classes with the artist in residency.

Dive Insight:

Tattoos are growing in popularity, as millennials embrace getting inked and show a penchant for custom designs, according to The Wall Street Journal. The industry brought in $1.6 billion in revenue last year and multiple big brands are looking to tap into this popularity.

Hotel brands have been ramping up their efforts to target millennials, who have been delaying starting families and are interested in travel. Partnering with Megan Massacre, who has starred in several tattoo-related shows on TLC and owns a tattoo studio in NYC could help the Moxy chain connect with her fans and attract the younger consumers it is focused on. By establishing Moxy as an artistic brand with local artists and hands-on workshops, the brand is differentiating itself from other corporate hotel brands and fostering a following with the local community.

Tapping into the tattoo trend can help Marriott build on its experiential marketing strategy and generate social media buzz around new location launches. Marriott has also been working on a strategy to build in experiences for Marriott Bonvoy loyalty members, who are looking for more site-specific and localized experiences in their travel.

Tattoos are a popular marketing tactic right now. Arby's recently ran a promotion with a tattoo artist in Long Beach, giving consumers sandwich-themed tattoos and used the event to start social conversations around the hashtag #SandwichesPorVida. The chain also made the tattoos available for download on its website in hopes that people in different locations would go out and get tattoos of its logo or menu items. >Domino's asked loyal fans in Russia to get tattoos of the brand's menu items and/or logo in a PR stunt offering 100 free pizzas per year for 100 years to fans that got inked. A franchisee launched the stunt to drive social media traffic.