Goals: Clearly state your marketing goals. What did you strive to achieve using this piece or program?Marriott Hotels has a longstanding partnership with TED, starting in 2016. In 2022, the goal was to drive awareness for through a unique activation that tapped into the demand for leisure travel. Backed by recent social listening research, we saw a significant year-over-year uptick in searches for #themedrooms (+106%) and “hotel rooms” + themed (+65%). With that, Marriott Hotels alongside TED’s award-winning educational arm TED-Ed, created their first-ever immersive experience outside of a TED conference, The Curiosity Room by TED. This activation aimed at sparking curiosity, featured interactive activities integrated into the Marriott Hotels guest room design at three locations– San Francisco, Bangkok, and London. To execute this activation, Marriott Hotels tapped agency 160/90 to collaborate with TED in developing the program, helping with design and ultimately build the interactive rooms. The room is anchored by an interactive city mural, covering an entire wall with that city's key destinations. At first glance, the mural appears to be just a beautiful illustration of the city's skyline, but as the room unfolds, the guest quickly discovers that the mural is an integral piece of solving the puzzle. As guests continue through the experience, the entire room comes to life to ignite their curiosity and inspires them to discover the host city in a new way. Upon completing the puzzles, a gif tells the guest where to place The Curiosity Journal on a key city monument. Then, a code in the TED letters tells the guest how to transform the answers to find the secret compartment in the safe. Using RFID technology, the journal physically launches a lighting sequence on the TED letters, a 2 ft by 6 ft wall sign, opening the T on the wall to reveal a congratulatory letter and prize. This physical manifestation of the Marriott Hotels and TED partnership was the perfect evolution, showcasing true innovation in the hospitality space through enriching experiences.

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)Earned media has achieved impactful coverage on both a global and continent level. To-date, PR has garnered over 100 placements with an estimated 277M+ impressions across U.S., CALA, AP, and UK markets. Key publications include Hemispheres and Business Traveler (both in September issues), Forbes, Skift, ELLE Korea, and Allure Korea. For social, the objective was to drive awareness of the partnership with Marriott Hotels and TED, along with the goal of building excitement and interest around The Curiosity Room by TED. This included: Sweeps room stay giveaway to kick off the partnership on Marriott Hotels’ social media, followed by a mix of in-feed photo, video, stories content across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram Influencer video content across Marriott Hotels’ Instagram and leveraging Marriott Bonvoy’s TikTok TED-Ed trailers content series to highlight the TED-Education aspect of the partnership Full paid social plan, promoting every piece of TED content that goes live with dollar support Social results as of September 14 equal 22M+ impressions, 831K engagements, 4.7K+ landing page clicks, 13% Engagement Rate (double the Marriott Hotels ER YTD). Top performing pieces of content here (2M+ views) and here. Paid media has delivered on social and through the TED channels with over five million impressions. Targeted media plan promotes Marriott Hotels and the TED partnership on TED & TED-Ed media platforms including TED-ED, TED.com, YouTube, Facebook; (desktop + mobile), social, pre-roll slate, post-roll video, companion units, curated playlists. TED ran media across TED-Ed YouTube and have received 5M impressions. Total CTR is 0.30%, which is significantly high against benchmarks, signaling it resonated with people. While not a primary goal, bookings went favorably in San Fran. The hotel was solidly booked for all weekends and had an average of two bookings a week, as well as upsell opportunities at check in.

Budget: Please include total budget vs. total actual cost. How much revenue has the piece or campaign generated and how does this compare to your goal? What was the return on investment?*KEEP CONFIDENTIAL* Total budget – $1M Total actual cost – $1M Revenue generated to date – Revenue is not a goal. Hotels used this to drive bookings. *KEEP CONFIDENTIAL*

Objective(s): What problems did the sales, marketing & guest satisfaction, or revenue optimization technology aim to solve?

Innovative use of technology: The extent to which new directions are charted or old challenges are resolved by using the technology in a new way.

Implementation & creativity: How was the technology implemented so that it was easy to use, solved a manpower problem, streamlined a function, or fueled recovery?

Results & Evaluation: How did the technology move the department or business forward to achieve goals, revenue or otherwise?

Goal: How did you demonstrate that you are committed to advancing diversity in your organization through your marketing?

Initiatives: Describe the promotion. What was your organization’s message and how does it foster diversity? How was the target audience channel developed/pursued?

Results: Please describe how your organization was purposeful in advancing diversity through this initiative. Please describe the metrics you used to judge success. What were the forecasted and actual outcomes described in your Key Performance Indicators (KPI)? What impact did the initiative have on your organization and for your customers?

Entry TitleMarriott Hotels’ The Curiosity Room by TED

DivisionIntegrated Campaign - Innovation

CategoryIntegrated Campaign