Hotel Branding: What We Got Wrong
How sending our EVP & Creative Director to work at a hotel for a week led to better more insightful work
We’ve been told often that it’s an Agency’s job to represent the customer. We’re hired because our clients are too close to the business, so our outsider perspective is valuable to make sure we create campaigns, brands, and experiences that connect. That’s true for SPARK, as I’m sure many others out there.
But when we start to believe too much in the value of our outside perspective and drink heavily from our own Kool-Aid, we only see half of the picture. So, here’s our confession: we became victim to our own confidence and got a lot of things wrong when it comes to hospitality branding.
When we brand a hotel, we expect the ideas that we concept to be executed exactly as we recommend. And when things don’t go according to our plan, we get frustrated. We can pretend like we don’t, but we constantly ask ourselves ‘why did this happen…again?’ Was it something someone said? Did passion for the idea run out? Or was it simply not working?
We got sick of wondering and decided to go right to the source. We put ourselves through an Agency Internship and worked inside The Epicurean Hotel for a week. What we walked away with gave us a generous dose of humility and insights that will forever transform the way we approach hospitality branding.
