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Marriott International: Crisis Communications·2017
- Global Brand Strategy
- Digital & Social
- Brand Measurement & Governance
What a brand says in a crisis starts with what it stops.
Hurricane Irma and the Napa Valley fires: what to pause, what to tell worried families, and how to say “open for business” without sounding tone-deaf.
The situation
In September 2017 Hurricane Irma crossed the Caribbean and ran up Florida. Marriott had hundreds of hotels in its path — owned and franchised — with guests and associates inside them, and social calendars full of scheduled content about vacations. I was the Americas’ social media subject-matter expert and the region’s digital crisis lead, working through the field marketing managers for Florida and the Caribbean with the corporate crisis team.
The diagnosis
The first inbound messages weren’t complaints. They were families asking whether a parent, a partner or a child staying at a property was safe. Hotel handles had no protocol for that — and the brand’s promotional voice was exactly the wrong voice.
Crisis social starts with what to stop saying, in what order; then what to tell the person asking about their mother; then when it is honest to say “open for business.”
What I decided
During the storm
I gave the regional field marketing managers a messaging strategy, copy and cadence for hotels in the impact zone — how to respond to people asking about the status of loved ones, where to route them, what not to promise — and had scheduled content paused across brand and property handles. Listening ran along the storm’s path on M Live’s tools so the field wasn’t guessing.
After the storm
I wrote the “open for business” playbook for the same managers — how to say a hotel was open for business without sounding too happy, what imagery was appropriate, when to resume promotion — and produced content to carry it, including cinemagraphs, alongside the engagement and social-care approach for guests arriving into a recovering destination.
Napa, a month later
The same discipline for the California team. When a regional agency proposed messaging around the glowing sunsets, I explained why a brand cannot post a beautiful sunset caused by a fire still burning, and what to say instead.
After the season I turned what had strained into recommendations for how loyalty, the Americas and the field should interact with social during a crisis.
The sequence
1
Pause promotion.
Scheduled brand and hotel content goes dark before a crisis is asked to compete with vacation messaging.
September 5, 2017. The first post after Irma crossed St. Thomas: what we knew, what we didn’t, and where to call. 2
Answer the urgent question.
Route family and guest questions to verified information; say what is known, say what is not, and never promise what the team cannot verify.
Forbes on the sea evacuation of 620 guests from St. Thomas. The field teams did the rescuing; we made sure the channels stayed accurate. 3
Re-enter carefully.
When a property can reopen, say “open for business” without pretending the destination is back to normal. Resume promotion only when the imagery, timing and local reality align.
February 16, 2018. Open for business: the post-hurricane playbook, with toolkits for every impacted property.
The order matters more than the words: what goes dark first, and what is allowed back first.
The complexity
Hundreds of hotels with their own handles and general managers; continent leadership; corporate communications; customer care; field marketing in Florida, California and the Caribbean and Latin America doing the hard part on the ground.
What changed
Two crises, one discipline
— and a field organization that knew where to look for answers by the end of it.
A written case for a crisis interaction model
between loyalty, the continent and the field.
The brand-strategy point:
the promise a brand makes in a campaign is tested in the week it can’t run one.
“…has successfully tackled large undertakings—ones that involved ambiguity, high-stakes, and numerous stakeholders, often with competing interests and incentives.”
My role
Manager, Digital Marketing — The Americas (2017–18): social media SME and North America digital crisis-communications lead. (Brunswick Group, 2022, C-suite reputation counsel, is on the About page, to keep this a single project.)
Built with
The field marketing managers in Florida, California and the Caribbean and Latin America, who carried the messaging to hundreds of hotels; corporate communications and the crisis team, who set what could be said; M Live, whose listening ran along the storm’s path.