Client Context
A Fortune 500 hospitality company with a diverse global brand portfolio sought to define a consistent endorsement strategy to strengthen brand perceptions across markets and unlock growth for newer and lower-awareness brands.
The Business Challenge
The team lacked a clear, globally validated understanding of how different endorsement strategies influence key guest perceptions, with prior work limited in scope and geography. This created real risk: scaling inconsistent brand decisions, under-leveraging the parent brand’s equity, and missing opportunities to strengthen perception and consideration, particularly for lesser-known brands. To move forward confidently, the organization needed a robust, “defendable” view of which endorsement approaches would meaningfully drive brand lift across markets.
Capabilities Applied
- Quantitative Survey Research
- Advanced Analytics
- Stakeholder Workshops
Approach
HawkPartners partnered with the client’s Insights team to design and execute a large-scale, statistically rigorous study to isolate the impact of endorsement strategies. Using a sequential monadic design, we tested 37 endorsement variations, developed in partnership with the client to cover all core strategies across 11 brands. Insights were gathered from more than 16,000 consumers across 9 global markets to create a consistent, comparable view of performance.
Impact
The work shifted the organization from fragmented, assumption-led decision-making to a unified, evidence-based endorsement strategy. Critically, the findings provided a clear perspective on the risk/benefit tradeoffs of endorsements, which gave stakeholders the confidence to scale a consistent approach globally. As a result, the organization was able to align on a forward-looking endorsement strategy for its portfolio to amplify brand equity, strengthen perceived value, and accelerate performance in competitive and emerging markets.
