Marriott Jumps Into the Content Marketing Game – Skift.

In 2013, Marriott Hotels partnered with fast company Mashable and Wired to create content for marketing its tourism products. This coincided with Marriott’s $90 million “Travel Brilliantly campaign”. it combined in-house and crowd sourced ideas about how to create the next generation hotel.

Content marketing that works can be astonishing. The Red Bull space jump video, became a pillar of brand storytelling in 2012. it has 35 million+ YouTube views and climbing. Jean-Claude Van Damme’s elegant Epic Split video in November (66 million+ views) promoting Volvo Trucks is another recent example of good content marketing.

For hotels, early adopters like Ace Hotel and Four Seasons have built effective blogs with aggressive social media campaigns along the lines of the socialIndexEngine to engage with their customers via owned and earned content.

Marriott Hotels is paying Fast Company, Mashable and Wired to match their branding with stories that are written by established travel writers and independent third-party travel executives. The articles are linked back to Marriott’s “Travel Brilliantly” initiative. Its a innovative approach that is well covered in this article by Shift.