Written for the leaders, owners and professionals of the 11 million businesses with between $50,000 and $50 million in revenue.

Some industries have returned to normal after COVID, besides perhaps, from a couple work-from-home days. But for hotels, many pandemic-era changes have stuck, according to NPR, with temporary safety measures becoming cost-saving ones. These include online check-in, self-serve breakfasts, and fewer housekeeping days, which have added up to a 9% drop in sector employment since 2019.

Nevertheless, Hilton and Marriott’s stocks are at all-time highs, and smaller hotels have seen a surge in travelers combining business and leisure. “You know, like it or not … the pandemic has kind of taught us a lot,” one Virginia hotel owner told NPR. “We’ve become a lot more efficient.”

Projects Watches: Creative director dials into Gen Z

GTA VI: Rockstar Games turned a leak into a win

(Source: Projects Watches)

Talk about timing the trend. Analog watches have found an unlikely new fandom in digitally-savvy young adults, with the global watch market expected to grow from $66 billion to $113 billion over the next decade.

Projects Watches saw an opportunity. Each of its timepieces boasts a bold, untraditional, TikTok-flexworthy design from an independent artist. However, since the entire lineup is priced between $100 and $200, it’s far more affordable than Rolexes and Omegas.

b.: spoke with Connor Hudson, the creative director at Projects Watches, about marketing a timeless product category to a new generation.

Hudson: That journey is something we always try and stay focused on. Hooking somebody with pretty animations and a catchy tune in the background, that’s a really solid way of getting somebody to zoom in or go to the website. We have different people talking about the watches. We have people who are showing how they can style them. We have videos that are about the story behind the watch or … telling the creator’s story.

Once we get those ads out there, we have very little control over the exact journey that people can go on. What we’ve learned is being able to fill different pots with different types of content … to remind you of us and tell a different part of our story. For us, constantly staying in experimentation mode with a lot of this stuff can move watches.

b.: How did you go about targeting people who aren’t that into watches but like the unique fashion element of it?

Hudson: There’s a two-pronged effort there. One, most of our watches are sold online, but then if they’re not sold online, they’re sold in museum gift stores [like] the MoMA Design Store. … I think that museums are a really great place for people to see our products in person for the first time. The people who are going there have just seen some amazing things from some pretty iconic artists. At the end of that journey, when they go to the gift shop, we can be there while they’re in that mindset.

And then on the social media side of things, we skewed way younger than most watch brands do. We made some really intentional efforts to bring in younger, more contemporary artists … but also work with a few different influencers that are more on the TikTok side of things.

We were hitting our stride at the same moment that people were starting to buy into watches [again]. A lot of that was introducing it to art fans, but also a much larger and diverse population of people who had never really considered wearing a watch.

This interview has been edited for length. Read the full Q&A at business.com.

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• Instagram: “Being hyperconnected on Instagram and with your community that you’re trying to engage with is really how you can get ahead and stay ahead.”
• MightyScout: “It’s really helped us keep a log and find an understanding of everything that people are sharing on our behalf, providing a visual look at user-generated content outside of Spreadsheet Land.”
• Asana: “Because we don’t have a physical office and work with freelancers from everywhere, Asana has been a lifesaver in keeping us connected as we tackle more projects.”

(Source: Rockstar)

With the most profitable media title in history, Grand Theft Auto publishers Rockstar Games wouldn’t leave any marketing to chance. But in a bit of irony, the trailer for its decade-in-the-making Grand Theft Auto VI got stolen.

A day before the planned reveal in late 2023, a leaker posted the game’s trailer on Twitter. Internally, Rockstar employees were frustrated — a major promotional moment had seemingly been lost — but their all-hands-on-deck solution to the crisis was elegant: an official tweet, hours later, that simply said, “Our trailer has leaked so please watch the real thing on YouTube.” 

That official tweet garnered 108.3 million views. And Rockstar’s YouTube trailer racked up 183 million views. According to analysts from financial services firm Raymond James & Associates, the early rollout created “a shift rather than a reduction in [performance] expectations,” as the publisher took complete control of the narrative. This was despite the unwelcome surprise.

With a trailer that broke the Guinness World Record for most views in 24 hours, we imagine Rockstar can totally live with that “shift.”

Written by Antonio Ferme and Dan Ketchum.