MindComet

Marriott: On The Move and Embracing New Media

http://news.marriott.com/

It’s no secret that I am a Marriott Brand loyalist. As a former employee and a family member of a current employee, my experiences with Marriott both as an associate and an guest have guided many of my customer services interactions. The organization taught me about what it means to provide “an experience”, the value of individual empowerment, and what it feels like to love your career.

In my current role I am often tasked with guiding my client partners to examples of other companies who lead in the field of interactive marketing. Marriott’s newly-launched “News Center” is very well-executed example of the marriage between corporate communications, social media, and consumer information. The difference in this type of news room verses a traditional “press” section of a corporate site is that it doesn’t make an assumption about who the user is. This style of news room treats all personas equally and allows for consumption of content in the media that the user chooses.

• Have a tech-heavy journalist visiting the site? There are digital media kits, interactive blogs, and a tag cloud to share the most current topics and help them write the story.

• Have investment banker interested in the brand? There are easy links to twitter feeds and RSS subscriptions, and information about the company’s culture and commitment to community available to keep them in the know.

• Have a mommy-blogger looking for content for her post about her dream vacation to Aruba? There are blog posts about Marriott’s top-rated hotels and links to executive chefs’ regional recipes to get her excited.

The point of approaching a news room in this manner is abandoning the assumption that visitors to this news site need advanced segmentation to ensure effectively communication. To the contrary, visitors who choose to visit the news section of a corporate site are already looking for information. Smart news and public relations marketers organize news content by topic to allow the visitor to choose their content and media type while exposing them to other topics of importance to the company. Did you know that Marriott has a Five-Point Environmental Strategy aimed at helping to protect the rainforests? Neither did I until I visited the News Center!

There is still room for improvement with Marriott’s News Center, (for example the “investor relations” link re-directs to an older design that looses the global navigation), but all-in-all I applaud Marriott for taking a big step forward in their communication efforts.

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Posted by Marcelle Turner on Mar. 05, 2010

‘Tis Better to Give Than to Receive

The following is an email message I received today:

Re: Scheduling a Call, Wednesday, May 27

Marcelle—

You may recall I tried contacting you last year on behalf of our client who had retained our firm to help them buy an interactive media agency.  We helped our client develop a significant strategic relationship, and we continue to meet interactive and traditional media agencies that are interested in some type of transaction, either selling their company, acquiring a company, or developing strategic relationships. 

I’m hoping we can schedule a call at your convenience to get re-acquainted. We’d like to get an update on how business is going for you, and give you an update on how our practice has evolved over the past few quarters. Even if M&A or partnership development are not on your immediate “To Do” list, we still would like to catch-up. Our business is about relationships, and they usually take a long time to develop. [COMPANY] approaches the market differently than other investment banks in our space, and I firmly believe it’s worth your time at least to know of the alternative that we offer.

I can suggest a possible call for the afternoon of Wednesday, May 27, but can be free almost anytime late next week and the following week with a bit of advance notice. 

I’ll follow up you with you by telephone over the next few days, but please feel free to call me in the interim.

Regards, [CONTACT]

* * * * *

On the surface this message seems well thought out and articulate. But it instantly rubbed me the wrong way, and I quickly figured out why. Here’s a fun little exercise: let’s break down the message…

How many times the contact was the subject of interest:  5
How many times the contact’s firm was the subject of interest: 7
How many times my needs were the subject of interest: 0

While I appreciate the sales attempt from anyone just trying to do their job in this tough economy, this message provided absolutely no compelling reason for me to respond. Other than the firm’s own interest and desire to “catch up,“ what was in it for me? What’s more, the perspective makes me question the contact’s focus and doubt the firm’s ability to represent my company’s best interest.

I feel I can only criticize this solicitation because I myself have been guilty of this offense! I’m absolutely positive that in my early years I sent many of these types of emails, feeling proud of my company’s work and confident that anyone I messaged would certainly want to hear about my success. Good news is that we can all continue to learn and I had a great reminder today of the importance of clearly articulating value.

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Posted by Marcelle Turner on May. 20, 2009