As a global partner with the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team, Marriott Bonvoy sought to build brand and partnership awareness and consideration on social media through its partnership. Travelers that love Formula 1 looked to Marriott Bonvoy for content about the incredible destinations Grands Prix take place in around the world. Marriott wanted to support regional teams with content about key destinations and create compelling, efficient content that could span many races in many different locations.
As a global travel program, Marriott had a unique case to make for Formula 1 fans. Nearly anywhere they travel in the world, especially for a Grand Prix weekend, a hotel brand in Marriott Bonvoy’s portfolio is waiting for them there. Marriott sought to explain the breadth of their global footprint and the diversity of hotel brands they offer, including The Ritz-Carlton, which is another Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team sponsor.
Marriott Bonvoy works closely with its editorial arm, Marriott Bonvoy Traveler, to support their articles with custom, compelling social content. An ongoing goal for the social team is to innovate with this content to increase awareness of Marriott Bonvoy Traveler and inspire members to explore the online magazine.
Partnership goals this franchise supported included:
Drive portfolio affiliation between Marriott Bonvoy and The Ritz-Carlton and other hotel brands.
Drive engagement with Formula 1 fans who are passionate about travel.
Support regional markets with custom content for paid amplification.
To meet these goals, Marriott Bonvoy created beautiful Instagram Story Destination Guides. Working with internal designers, Marriott created custom illustrations of the team’s drivers. Each destination guide showcased landmarks and The Ritz-Carlton hotels in the surrounding racetrack area. Three to five distinct Instagram Story panels highlighted the drivers, an educational or interactive question about the location, and a destination-specific travel article leading to Marriott Bonvoy Traveler, Marriott’s editorial arm.
In 2023, Marriott expanded this franchise to new regions, including Caribbean and Latin American, Europe and Middle East, and Asia Pacific teams. Together, they brought global and regional audiences a beautiful rendition of the cities where races took place, amplifying them in-region with paid media.
Notable Destination Guides included the following key races:
Monaco Grand Prix – This map highlighted a unique aspect of Marriott Bonvoy’s portfolio, The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection’s Evrima.
British Grand Prix – This iteration of the Destination Guides included the first map to include the entire host country and it became the highest-performing asset on Instagram among the series.
Singapore Grand Prix – This Destination Guide was created with a night theme to honor the first night race Marriott covered.
Las Vegas Grand Prix – This map highlighted 11 properties coming to Marriott Bonvoy’s portfolio as part of their new brand, MGM Collection.
In 2023, Marriott designed and illustrated 12 Destination Guides native to Instagram Stories to align with Grand Prix weekends. The goal was to infuse Marriott Bonvoy Traveler editorial articles and Marriott Bonvoy’s portfolio of hotel brands interestingly and visually to deliver a new type of content to an F1 audience at a culturally relevant moment in time. Marriott saw a 24.9% increase in “backs” (or re-views) on these guides versus all other Instagram story content shared in 2023, which indicated that more fans, specifically F1 fans, looked again at the content.
Marriott also achieved their goal of supporting regional teams in partnership marketing by creating content for them to use in paid media. In Europe, Marriott reached 13.6M users with 84.4M impressions while generating just over 5M video views across all Grand Prix weekends. They also doubled the .1% benchmark for click throughs to Marriott Bonvoy Traveler articles, meeting another goal to support editorial content.
By leveraging stunning illustrations and helpful editorial content for Formula 1 fans, Marriott Bonvoy met partnership goals:
Drove portfolio affiliation between Marriott Bonvoy and The Ritz-Carlton and other hotel brands, which Marriott achieved by featuring hotel brands and properties in 12 global markets.
Drove engagement with Formula One fans who are passionate about travel, which Marriott achieved by creating content compelling enough for fans to view it multiple times.
Supported regional markets with custom content for paid amplification, which Marriott achieved by partnering with regional teams to generate additional impressions.
