What Hospitality Providers Need To Know About Media Now - Dorothy Dowling

Josiah: I'm curious how you're thinking about media. You've led marketing organizations and had teams and teams of people who are creating media messaging. Even if I think about something like podcasting, essentially, this is like a radio conversation that's been around for 100+ years. So, the format isn't that novel. We have different ways to distribute, but the way that we interact with each other is not brand new. But we're standing sort of on the edge of this world where things that used to be expensive or time-consuming to create. As marketers, we spent so much time creating "content." I feel like that is going just to reach this point where it is everywhere. What becomes valuable as it relates to learning and teaching in a media environment where you have AI-driven-everything it feels?

Dorothy: I'm fascinated by design. I was a pretty early adopter in trying to test out different ways of working with AI. I'm excited about some of the new additions that Microsoft is bringing in terms of some of the visual asset integration. We can take a lot of static photography and create a lot of explainer videos and other kinds of commercial messaging in different ways. And I think it is a real democratization of how content will be created, which we've been on that journey for quite some time. But I think it's now moving to a different level in that the investments you have to make in telling stories, you can continue to evolve those without the same kind of budgets that used to be needed in the past. But I do think it's gotten far more complicated in terms of understanding audiences, and of course, with all the cookies and the change in attribution modeling that will occur next year, I think it's a good thing because we've been so focused on last-click attribution in terms of trying to justify advertising investments. So, I think that the ability to understand customer journeys is going to be very impactful. And, of course, what Google is now doing with Performance Max, you're throwing all of your elements, what I consider almost into a blender and having them actually make a lot of recommendations about where you should be placing your messaging and their ability to give us some sense of how customers are engaging with all of that. It's moving at such a rapid clip, but that goes back to that statement about being invested in learning and being open to thinking about things very differently. I've always believed marketing was about surround sound in terms of understanding that your audiences are always engaging in many different places. You have to be able to incubate and try out new things, but you also have to understand where you're going to get the biggest impact with some of your messaging to continue brand building. What I think has shifted over the last several years is that we've been so focused on attribution modeling and digital capabilities that we've lost some of the narrative and storytelling capabilities. I mean, I say the same thing that you do about radio and podcasting because I always translate because, of course, many people podcast at events. And I just say, you know, that's like satellite radio that we used to do many years ago at hotels when we did an opening. But it's just what's old is new again. And I do think, generally, we all like to listen. I mean, I have both an Amazon and a Google Home in almost every room because I'm constantly asking them to give me something in terms of some listening because that's also something that brings me a lot of innate joy.

Josiah: This is why I'm so excited to be talking with you: You're balancing these two worlds of what is timeless and experimenting with what's at the forefront. You mentioned AI. You talk about kind of what Google's doing in terms of advanced attribution, and things like that. And I find that fascinating, right? Because there are elements of how humans interact with one another that are never going to change...