The anonymous donor clearly had money to give in the hopes of securing the return of the slippers. Marriott International had a different kind of currency – Marriott Rewards points. The M Live creative team developed a concept around one of the central themes in the Wizard of Oz: the power of the ruby red slippers to take Dorothy back home to Kansas. Playing with the idea of “they took her home…. They’ll take you anywhere,” we offered 1 million Marriott Rewards points for the safe return of the shoes and leveraged the creative messaging through Marriott Hotels and Marriott Rewards social channels. Marriott Hotels also granted access to a property-owned billboard in Times Square over the Marriott Marquis (the largest digital billboard in NYC), where we ran our creative in one of the highest-traffic corners of the world.

All social creative was executed in-house and Marriott Hotels’ outside creative agency. All creative from individual social posts to the billboard creative and microsite was executed in just days. Because the Times Square billboard time slot is owned by the Marriott Marquis Times Square, we were able to quickly and efficiently reach scale with our creative.

During the weeklong ruby slippers activation, the Times Square billboard garnered 10.5 million impressions. More than 300,000 people enter the Times Square Bowtie everyday and almost 115,000 drivers and passengers go through Times Square by car and bus everyday. In total, Times Square digital billboard advertising receives nearly 1.5 million impressions each day. M Live saw significant numbers around consumer engagement across our social channels. The Grand Rapids, Minnesota police department leading the investigation shared that tips regarding the slippers came in from as far away as Australia. On Twitter, we saw 4.5 million earned Twitter estimated impressions, from 663 Twitter mentions with 66.9% of conversations in the U.S. Response was well received with several influencers retweeting Marriott Hotels including actress Kristen Chenoweth with more than 1 million followers, Newsweek, Beauty & Essex, Bethany Williams, and Nick Cannon. On Instagram, the post from Marriott Hotels had more than 700 likes.