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Marriott hands media account to Spark Foundry

International hotel group Marriott has moved its media account from GroupM’s Wavemaker to Publicis Groupe’s Spark Foundry.

Some of Marriott’s 30 brands

Marriott kicked off the global review last year in an effort to rethink the scale and scope of its global paid media needs after it acquired Starwood Hotels and Resorts.

A dedicated Publicis Groupe team, known as Marriott One Media, will work with Marriott’s internal media teams globally.

Marriott group has 30 brands with 6,500 hotels across 127 countries. That scale, according to the company, led it to create a ‘Global Marketing Optimisation’ team to make its marketing and media efforts more effective.

Sue Squillace, CEO of Spark Foundry Australia said: “The global win of Marriott demonstrates the power of collaboration and scale of our global Publicis network and brands. All media will be handled by Spark Foundry and we will work closely with Publicis Sapient in our newly-created ‘Marriott One Media’ group. This innovative structure will provide Marriott with the best talent, tools and personalised marketing insights to take the hotel group to the cutting edge of guest engagement.”

In July last year, Spark Foundry was born when Publicis scrapped the 20-year-old Mediavest branding. The rebrand aimed to highlight the agency’s capabilities beyond media buying in areas such as analytics, insights and technology, and attempted to position the agency as one with a start-up mentality.

MEC, which has subsequently merged with Maxus to become Wavemaker, won the global account for the business in 2011, when it was worth approximately $120m.

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