The Campaign

Courtyard is designed for younger business travellers (primarily Gen Y) who are ambitious and purposeful in all aspects of life. We call them the Optimistic Achievers. They are confident, energetic individuals who seek less uniformity and welcome change. This is a generation of digital natives. Social networking and mobile are the centre of their business and leisure universe. Technology not only powers up their lives but also their dreams. They use digital technology to unleash their creativity; and passion often leads them to creating and starting businesses. 87% of Indian Gen Y believe that technology has put many professional and entrepreneurial opportunities in front of them. Blessed by the rise of crowdfunding platforms such as Gofundme, Kickstarter and Indiegogo, ambitious and smart people with great ideas are seeing a possibility to capitalize their passion.

Results

India is growing the youngest and largest workforce in the world. With such a significant boom in the population of young business travellers, every hotel chain has fought fiercely for their share of the opportunity. As a business hotel brand with 11 hotels in India, Courtyard by Marriott must leverage the colossal growth potential, but this is a challenging task. Our primary target is a generation of non-committal and pragmatic Gen Y travellers who are pampered with hotel alternatives - they lack a compelling reason to stay at Courtyard. Therefore, we have to differentiate strongly and emotionally, or else a significant group of business travellers would see Courtyard as irrelevant. Looking at the culture of Gen Y Indians, we unlocked a powerful insight that allowed Courtyard to create an inspiring initiative – an Elevator Pitch challenge which invited ambitious Gen Ys to share their exciting and innovative entrepreneurial ideas. We also developed an impactful message – Stay Ahead of the Game – to tighten our connection with them.

We partnered the leading business news website in India - the Economic Times India, to place online banners on their online sites to drive awareness and participation throughout the campaign period. We created and distributed editorial contents (articles) on ET.com to engage our target in the Elevator Pitch story. To create deeper engagement and build social currency, a social component was built into the campaign. Before the winner was announced, the public was invited to vote on the microsite on their predicted winner to win prize. They could also like, share, and comment on every idea to support the candidates.

Rewriting the rules of the category, the campaign delivered strongly and uplifted Courtyard’s performance soon after launch. Interest in Courtyard increased by 20% . Revenues during the campaign rose by 36% , outstripping those of the previous year, allowing Courtyard to pull away from competitors and creating an indelible affinity in the minds of Gen Y Indian business travellers. More importantly the campaign gave entrepreneurs a great platform to showcase their brilliant ideas and a powerful boost to their future success.

The Elevator Pitch was a young entrepreneurial challenge in India aimed to support young talents with big dreams and ideas. We invited aspiring entrepreneurs to submit business and innovation ideas via our campaign micro-site. Five shortlisted finalists were given 60 seconds to pitch their idea in an elevator of Courtyard Mumbai to a panel of judges. Courtyard awarded the winner with 1 Million rupees to take her business idea to next level. The competition epitomized Courtyard’s effort to give the young achievers a big lift in their ambition, and reflected our advertising message – Stay Ahead of the Game – perfectly. With Courtyard, you can stay ahead of your game because Courtyard believes in your potential and is committed to supporting you at an early stage. The expression was catchy for Gen Y, who relate to challenges in life as a “game”. By embracing their language, we made Courtyard relevant.