Marriott International had the foresight to adopt a ‘video-first’ strategy when communicating with candidates and employees. To do that, they enlisted the help of yours truly, the gang at Casual Films.
As the digital landscape continues to be dominated by social media and visual technology, online users can find instant gratification at every turn. As such, employers are searching for new hiring and employee retention strategies to capture the attention of this oversaturated demographic. With this aim in mind, Marriott’s ambitious partnership with Casual Films has yielded excitingly effective results for the brand’s recruitment and employee engagement.
Appealing to Motivated Employees, Future and Present
To remain on the leading edge with the hotelier's recruitment efforts, Marriott and Casual introduced a steady stream of shareable, globalised content to reach incoming Millennial and Generation Z job applicants. With the majority of traffic to the Marriott Careers website heading to the "Job" pages, offering engaging content that pushes and inspires applicants at the decisive moment is a must.
Another aim of the project was to reinforce Marriott’s culture and values among current employees. The move drove retention and employee engagement by highlighting the sweeping scope of Marriott’s employer brand promise. Just as video would keep job seekers on Marriott’s site for longer, so it would encourage current team members to explore and rededicate themselves to their company’s mission.
When it came to the content of the videos, Marriott’s vast employment opportunities and the possibilities for professional growth and development within the company speak for themselves. Using video and audio allowed Marriott to segment its message and target by “brand, geography and discipline” depending on the intended audience for each piece of content. Deft use of mixed media marketing allowed the company to become, in their own words, “a broadcaster.”
In campaigns like “When You Smile…” Marriott paints a vivid picture of life — and not just worklife. Featuring individual testimonials and a quick but comprehensive trip through the Marriott universe, job seekers are invited to find their unique place in a vast, varied, innovation-minded network of peers. To that point, the series makes plain the many ways in which you, the potential employee, can benefit from a career with Marriott, and implies Marriott’s need for a workforce that’s diverse in experience, interests and expertise.
Marriott Goes Viral
The proof that an emphasis on audio-visual content was the right move for Marriott is in the numbers. For the 60+ pieces of original content produced by Marriott and Casual, views among target audiences have exceeded 1.8 million. Video alone has driven more than four times the engagement of written posts, while podcasts have outpaced written content by nine times. Overall, since Marriott implemented an emphasis on video and audio content, they have seen a 10x boost in engagement across social media platforms.
It would be easy to credit the mediums themselves. After all, video content has been proven time and again to outperform more traditional forms of marketing content. However, this particular collaboration between Casual and Marriott has beaten industry-wide social engagement rates by 25x.
Social media channels that drive traffic to Marriott’s job sites have also taken off: LinkedIn and Twitter followings have grown by 20% and 65% respectively. Marriott’s Facebook page has taken an industry-leading position with almost 1.2 million followers, while on Instagram, the company has exceeded 25,800 followers.
Casually Speaking, It Went Pretty Well…
Marriott’s effort to stay ahead of the hiring curve has measurably come to fruition. The company’s CRM “Stay in touch” database has amassed more than 1.6 million job seekers and open rates at more than 25%, which, in case you hadn’t already guessed, significantly exceed industry standards.
Considering the enormous increase in engagement with prospective employees across the globe, the content partnership between Casual Films and Marriott has been a resounding success. With this forward-thinking, proactive approach to promotion and hiring, Marriott and Casual Films have been able to showcase and make sustainable the thriving ecosystem behind the former’s iconic name.