You know how when you’re on a plane and you want to click into a movie on the airline’s device, and you’re forced to first watch an ad … how does that make you feel?

I’m brand-obsessed so my answer is likely different than many. I love it! I love seeing brands in action and hearing/feeling how they are presenting themselves to the world. Like the Marriot brand and its loyalty program Bonvoy that ties all of the hotel sub-brands in the Mariott portfolio all together.

The advertising campaign that they show in-flight has the ability to showcase the entire portfolio of brands …

“Where Can We Take You?” is such a great call to action, a little nudge to start planning a trip, and a challenge to the brain to imagine an adventure. In that short spot we get the sense of the individual brand characters that make up the Marriott portfolio of hotels.

But what really works about the campaign is its ability to then also individually highlight each brand personality and brand promise in short form. Here’s Westin …

Same tagline, same song but with a very different brand essence which in this case is wellness.

And now W Hotels …

There again is the tagline and the song but with yet again another promise of “finding your vibe.”

For the Suite collection of hotels, it’s about adventure …

And here’s one last execution for one-of-a-kind places …

You get the idea, a campaign that’s campaign-able across many different brands in the portfolio. It’s a creative challenge I can almost hear the client giving to the agency and the agency holding its breath while it tries to figure it out. The team did.

The other piece to this that’s very interesting from a branding perspective is the use of the Bonvoy loyalty program to tie the various brands and properties together. It’s a unifying branding asset that unites otherwise separate brands under Marriott. And even brand Bonvoy is starting to take on meaning of its own which feels all about being taken care of each time no matter which hotel and which location in ways that differ by hotel brand name.

That’s a lot and the brand pulls it off.

To me, marketing is about (among other things) finding that campaign that you can be executed multiple times and in multiple ways, over and over again (as I said yesterday in my capture of the Uber Eats campaign with Jennifer Aniston).

I happened to see the Marriott Bonvoy work on an airplane, but I know there were executions in other channels as well. Something that makes a campaign also a campaign. Stating the obvious now I am sure.

What say you? What’s your experience? JIM

The Marriott Bonvoy Portfolio