Goals: Clearly state your marketing goals. What did you strive to achieve using this piece or program?
As part of their partnership with the championship-winning Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team, Marriott was tasked with connecting with a new audience on social media. They needed to connect deeply with Gen Z to drive relevance for the brand with their Next Generation Experience Seeker target audience, ultimately persuading them to enroll in the program.
An opportunity with a 22-year-old student, Formula 1 fan, and content creator allowed Marriott to achieve key partnership goals, all while engaging Gen Z in an authentic way.
Throughout their partnership with the Mercedes AMG-PETRONAS F1 Team, Marriott learned that motorsport fans loved content that demonstrated fluency in culture of the fandom. This insight led to the creation of their "Special Delivery" content series. Meanwhile, Jo (a.k.a. @motorsportsdiaries on TikTok) had cultivated a highly-engaged audience in the online F1 community, especially among younger fans. Because the series featured George Russell (Jo's favorite driver) she naturally engaged.
Jo posted her reaction to Marriott's content in late 2023 and Marriott's opportunistic community managers immediately chimed in. Jo loved that the brand understood the F1 online culture and her Gen Z audience and posted more content.
Soon, the Mercedes AMG-PETRONAS F1 Team posted a video that took this brand-to-influencer interaction to the next level. The YouTube video, which earned 628K views, was a recap of the best George Russell Memes of 2023 for George Russell himself to watch. It included the full one-minute clip of Jo’s reaction to the "Special Delivery" episode. Her genuine, and entertaining, reaction achieved a valuable placement on a partner's channels for Marriott that couldn't have been bought. For Jo, this was a dream come true. She posted multiple videos expressing her excitement about her favorite driver seeing her video.
Marriott knew this was a relationship worth cultivating, and planned a full-scale partnership with Jo in 2024.
Results: Which of your original goals did you achieve and how? How did you measure the effectiveness of the piece or campaign? Entrants should provide quantifiable results of their tactics or campaigns. (for example, click through rates or ad equivalency)
For the 2024 Barcelona Grand Prix, Marriott invited Jo to experience a race weekend the way Marriott Bonvoy members get to as part of Marriott Bonvoy Moments and tell her community about it. However, Marriott was keeping something big as a surprise—Jo would get the opportunity to meet and create content with the driver who started it all, George Russell.
She was genuinely excited to be a partner and tell the story of Marriott Bonvoy and the Mercedes AMG-PETRONAS F1 Team to her audience. In addition to the three contracted videos she published from Barcelona, she also created many added-value posts, all of which felt natural to her feed and content creation style. Her content helped break down why Gen Z should enroll in Marriott Bonvoy, showcased the partnership between Marriott Bonvoy and the Mercedes AMG-PETRONAS F1 Team, and explained how members could get access to experiences like hers through Marriott Bonvoy Moments.
Jo's 15 Grand Prix TikToks resulted in this organic performance:
• 2.1M views with 355K engagements
• A 25.6% engagement rate (well above the 1-2% benchmark)
• 17.8K video saves
• 411 custom enrollment URL clicks
• $78K in earned media equivalent spend (for a 6:94 estimated ROI)
The content Marriot created featuring Jo on their channels also performed well above benchmarks:
• 14.2% ER and 180% above platform average view times
• 40x more saves on these TikToks than average for Marriott
• Incredibly high sentiment within comments from the F1 online community
These results proved that working with a niche influencer with a highly-engaged audience will provide far more value than just her 71K followers on TikTok. Marriott's partnership with Jo resulted in their most effective earned content of the year.
Marriott's deep F1 knowledge let them form a relationship with Jo and her young audience authentically. Leveraging fandom an engaged creator let Marriott reach Gen Z fans, an audience that is hard to break into naturally.
Return on Investment: How much revenue has the piece or campaign generated and how does this compare to your goal? What was the return on investment?
Through a natural partnership with an engaged creator, and giving her access to experiences she couldn't get anywhere else, Marriott drove significant earned media on TikTok directly targeted towards their key audience, Gen Z.
Before Marriott even took Jo to Barcelona, smart community management and a nimble surprise and delight strategy drove their highest earned media on social media in 2023. The videos Jo shared about the comments on her videos and the package of merchandise were the first steps in building a valuable relationship. Jo's videos in 2023 resulted in more than 1.1M organic views for an equivalent of $105K in media spend.
Despite having a significantly smaller number of overall followers than the official Marriott Bonvoy TikTok account, Jo's outpaced Marriott's share of followers aged 18-24. Jo's TikTok audience is comprised mostly (74%) of people who fall in this age range (about 44K followers) while only about 14% of Marriott TikTok audience was (about 42K followers). The earned media Marriott received is equivalent to a 6:94 estimated ROI. This meant Marriott was able to reach the right audience with the right content through the right creator.
Marriott's partnership with the Mercedes AMG-PETRONAS F1 Team helped them tap into the passions of young F1 fans and introduce them to Marriott Bonvoy for the first time. This organically drove partner awareness, brand awareness, and consideration through earned media and content collaboration.
Entry Title
Leveraging Fandom to Earn an Engaged Gen Z Audience
Division
Digital - Influencer Marketing