Marriott grounds loyalty program with "magic" metrics
Pokémon Go was the summer-of-2016 digital surprise that caught many marketers off guard. But Marriott International was ready to react. Its M-Live digital-listening team – working with data analytics supplied by Epsilon, a subsidiary of Alliance Data – tracked the largely millennial craze and determined a way to tap into the excitement.
"We made friends with this fellow Nick Johnson," recalled Karin Timpone, Marriott's Global Marketing Officer. "He was a Pokémon master who worked in Brooklyn at a cool startup."
Johnson, in fact, was reportedly the first person to catch...