M Live conducted a series of learning sessions with brand social & field marketing teams in order to identify better ways to collect and distribute property content and stories. One significant pain-point was to simplify communication and align property to brand. In particular, properties felt their big-wins might go unsupported, missing the visibility that they deserve.

The solution was to create an innovative online platform which could to realize goals to:

-Strengthen communication between properties and brands

-Capitalize on content already created by properties

-Increase awareness and drive bookings

-Identify superstar properties & associates

-Increase the number of activations M Live facilitates

Supporting 30 unique brands, the primary stakeholders, each with its own identity, M Live created a “bespoke” approach to content collection, curation, and distribution. By putting the focus on identifying the right content for brand teams, The platform increases the identification and activation of exceptional content in real-time.

Built as a stand-alone platform and deployed via email, intranet, and a series of webinars and has become a nexus for content creation. M Live Story launched May 2017 and activates 750,000 Marriott associates working among Marriott’s portfolio of hotels in over 125 countries. Any employee can submit a property story.

A simple 3-step submission process allows hotels to define their related brand and geo-location for simple routing, to tell their story, and finally to upload imagery and video.

Submitted stories are collected in a database and displayed through a simple GUI built into columns defined by its content development phase: newly-submitted stories, stories in-review by the M Live team to ensure alignment to brand standards, and stories in process with brand teams for activation.

Making a simple tool for properties and a streamlined dashboard for brands to collect and respond to stories has opened the floodgates of content submission.

Launched in May, 2017, M Live Story has received nearly 600 submissions for 22 Brands. Marriott Hotels, Aloft, and Courtyard see the highest number of submissions. Asia and North America receive the highest volume of submissions regionally.

Results are impactful: submissions to M Live Story uncovered over 1500 unique creative assets, leading to over 170 successfully published stories.

The platform is indispensable in regards to identifying & leveraging previously unnoticed content garnering:

-26M+ views

-665K+ likes

-317K+ shares

-67K+ comments

Brands posted top performing social content directly because of the creation of the platform. Properties have expressed a sense of validation and subsequent upticks in follower counts across social channels when their stories are accepted by Brand.

Without M Live Story, all of this content would have gone unnoticed, unposted, and unrecognized.