Marriott is going all-in on Millennials. The Bethesda, M.D.-based company is launching a new logo and tagline, "Travel Brilliantly" in its latest attempt to attract the growing market of young travellers looking for luxury at a value.  

The international hotel chain recently announced it will bring its European hotel brand, AC Hotels by Marriott, to the States to attract younger business travelers, while it is also planning to introduce a Millennial-friendly hotel brand, Moxy, across Europe in a partnerhsip with IKEA. 

What's in it for Marriott? According to the Washington Business Journal, “younger business travelers who make three or more business trips per year are a $35 billion market.” The chain hopes to attract the sought-after demo with a new, simplified "M" logo, a mobile app, offering different dining options, and allotting more open spaces in its hotels that can be used as public workspaces as well as streamlined rooms.Continue reading...

Marriott is making another bid for Millennial travelers as it announces plans to import its European-based hotel chain, AC, to America. Earlier this year, Marriott introduced a partnership with IKEA for a new hotel brand called Moxy, which will cater to Millennials across Europe. 

AC Hotels, which is based in Madrid, was bought by Marriott back in 2010 and rechristened AC Hotels by Marriott, HotelChatter.com reports. The hope was that it would help Marriott expand its footprint across that continent, USA Today reports. That’s resulted in 79 AC Hotels by Marriott across Spain, Portugal, France and Italy. Now it’s looking to do the same in the States with a plan for 200 more in the next 10 years.

"It's the right time to bring it to the US," says Brian King, global brand officer for Marriott Endorsed Brands, according to USA Today. "You import wine and you import cars. We're going to import a hotel brand."Continue reading...

It's graduation time and many of those college graduates are moving back in with their original roommates—their parents.

Bloomberg Businessweek is targeting twenty-somethings with a campaign encouraging those ‘boomerang kids’ to head-out on their own with the lure of a one-year subscription to the magazine. The “Bloomberg Businessweek Gets You Ahead” campaign website offers 42 e-gift cards that parents and friends can send to Gen Y-ers still living at home for an added kick in the behind—and a good laugh.Continue reading...

The Facebook generation is so over Facebook, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.

After surveying 802 teens, ages 12 to 17 about their online habits, it turns out that Facebook has become a "social burden." "While Facebook is still deeply integrated in teens’ everyday lives, it is sometimes seen as a utility and an obligation rather than an exciting new platform that teens can claim as their own." 

While 94 percent of teens are maintaining their Facebook accounts, more and more continue to migrate to Twitter and Instagram as largely parent-free zones that give them a greater ability to freely express themselves. According to the survey, 11 percent of teens had Instagram accounts, 5 percent have Tumblr accounts and 7 percent have accounts on Myspace.Continue reading...

When you're stuck in neutral as McDonald's has been lately, you begin to try a little bit of everything. Expanding the menu. Focusing on value options. Sacking your chief of US operations. And, now—reducing the menu.

On the heels of its elimination of the Angus Burger, Fruit & Walnut Salad and Chicken Selects, there are reports that other McDonald's U.S. menu items are on the chopping block too as the chain scrambles for ways to maximize traffic and revenues while minimizing costs to deal with stubbornly reluctant consumers. It's also part of how the chain hopes to woo back millennials, as CEO Don Thompson is expected to outline at the company's annual general meeting on Thursday.

Caesar Salad, McSkillet Burrito and the Southern Style biscuit may also disappear, according to a franchisee e-mail obtained by Bloomberg. These would be further cutbacks in McDonald's core menu at a time when the company increasingly has been emphasizing the traffic-building value instead of "limited-time" items such as popcorn chicken and McRib sandwiches.Continue reading...

In what Yahoo hopes to be a life-altering deal, the aging internet company acquired social media site Tumblr for $1.1 billion, affectively gaining the attention of millions of users that visit Tumblr monthly (that is, if they all don't jump ship first).

Purchase rumors began to swirl last week after the company's CFO Ken Goldman spoke of Yahoo's "aging demographic" and their need to be "cool" again. With the acquisition now official, Yahoo will suddenly be knee deep in the content-consuming, uber-engaged millennials that it craves, but the question is whether Tumblr's core users will stick around for fear that Yahoo will alter the blogging site—or whether advertisers and brands can handle the rough-and-tumble world of Tumblr.

However, CEO Marissa Mayer was quick to assure users (with her first Tumblr post, of course; she also launched her own Tumblr and showed a sense of humor over the "WFH" debate) that Yahoo would "not screw it up" and had no plans to tamper with the site or its crew. Mayer's post, in the copyright-flouting spirit of Tumblr, used an image that without first getting its creator's permission.

Founder David Karp—who is slated to become Forbes' youngest billionaire—will remain at the head of the company along with his team. According to Mayer, it seems the only major plans Yahoo has for Tumblr (besides not screwing it up) are more opportunities for native advertising (aka advertorials or sponsored content, which Karp & Co. have been testing in the wake of earlier stumbles) in addition to implementing Yahoo search on Tumblr to start mining all that juicy millennial user data.Continue reading...

Chick-fil-A has a handle on great fast food, good service, enthusiasm about the brand and a winsome advertising campaign. But the chain has spent a good deal of the last couple of years defending the traditional-values advocacy of CEO Dan Cathy, scion of the founder of Chick-fil-A; parrying accusations by the gay-rights community and attempting to come to some accommodation with them.

Now, back to what the brand really wants to be known for: its food and service. As part of a new "transparency push," Advertising Age says Chick-fil-A will offer instant "behind-the-counter" tours to anyone who wants them. And it plans to overhaul its salads and line of chicken wraps to position them as even healthier menu options than before.

The tours are to be offered at Chick-fil-A's 1,700 locations, the magazine said, on an instant basis. That could pose some operational challenges. "It's a nice warm fuzzy, but the challenge is, how are they going to do this if they're in the middle of a hugely busy lunch or dinner hour?" Joel Cohen, a restaurant-marketing consultant, told the magazine.Continue reading...

Thanks to the efforts of a handful of entrepreneurs, American fast food is moving from a form of nutritional epithet to add an entirely new dimension: a fledgling business model that uses the quick-serve platform to get better-for-you fare into the mouths of more willing consumers.

At the same time, not to be outdone, traditional fast-food chains are tacking heavily into more nutritional fare after several years of more or less playing at it. Taco Bell, for instance, has just announced its strategy to offer healthier menu options, while McDonald's is veering more deeply into wraps.

LYFE Kitchen is probably the best known of the cluster of promising better-for-you startups which also includes Clover, Veggie Grill, Tender Greens and Native Foods Cafe. New York Times Magazine writer Mark Bittman chronicled some of what these brands are doing.

"After the success of companies like Whole Foods [and] Annie's and Kashi, there's now a market for a a fast-food chain that's not only healthful itself, but vegetarian-friendly, sustainable and even humane," he wrote. "And, this being fast food: cheap.Continue reading...