Marriott has gone out of its way to appeal to current and new customers, and its original content has been quite impressive, especially Two Bellmen — a comedy where two bellman foil a heist.
You can’t keep two good bellmen down, so Marriott Content Studios is ready to put out a sequel. In it, the two bellmen (Hollywood stuntmen William Spencer and Caine Sinclair) make the journey to Dubai, where they’re immediately tasked with an adventurous journey to retrieve a missing USB stick from a vehicle, all the while using plenty of parkour-style tricks to their advantage.
The production is a follow-up to last year’s hit film, which managed to draw in a lot of attention on YouTube, and showed off the unique style that Marriott has been putting into its programming.
This time around, the studio is adding a bit of star power to the production, including local Dubai comedian Ali Al Sayed and actress Frida Pinto, who previously appeared in the Academy Award-winning Slumdog Millionaire.
Speaking with LoopNorth in an interview last year, Marriott’s Vice President of Global Creative and Content Marketing, David Beebe, explained how a special kind of connection to consumers can be special. “We do have a very intimate relationship with our customers – they sleep with us, after all,” he quipped.
“I don’t think it matters what generation you’re from. You’re not engaging with traditional marketing messages. You have DVRs, you can skip over television spots. Technology is a great thing but it also enables everyone to be a creator, essentially. There are so many messages,” he explained when it came to the outreach of programming, including content like Two Bellmen and the romantic French Kiss.
Storytelling plays a key factor. “Stop interrupting them, what they’re actually interested in watching, and become what they’re interested in,” he added.
Even though the story still revolves around Marriott, that doesn’t mean the brand has to be the entire focus, according to Beebe. “Obviously, (the film is) going to be about travel and it’s going to involve a hotel but then it’s more about pulling the brand into that story. But not in the way that it’s like a typical product integration.”
Feedback for Two Bellmen proved that Marriott was on the right track. “People commenting, liking, sharing, saying, in the case of Two Bellmen, ‘I understood that was a 17-minute commercial, essentially, but I liked it. I watched it.'”
