Refreshing a Hospitality Brand’s Strategy to Position for Growth

Challenge:

While the pandemic disrupted virtually every industry, none was potentially more fundamentally affected than travel. In response to the “new normal” set of consumer attitudes and behaviors, a global hospitality client sought to re-establish itself as the preeminent premium brand in hospitality. To inform that effort, they sought to assess the brand’s assets and liabilities, update its understanding of its target audience, and develop a refreshed brand strategy to drive accelerated brand growth.

Approach:

To achieve these goals, HawkPartners worked closely with the client team through a multi-modal approach.

• Discovery included a competitive brand audit, global qualitative guest insights, on-property ethnographies, and key internal stakeholder engagement to drive fresh thinking and creative development.
• HawkPartners then employed our creative development team to develop an initial set of positioning territories – each of which addressed a specific emotional and rational guest need identified during Discovery. Co-creation groups enabled target guests to iterate and refine the territories in a collaborative manner. After facilitating several cross-functional stakeholder workshops, we gained alignment on a short list of consumer-first brand territories to move forward.
• The team then conducted global quantitative research and advanced analytics across major global markets – which surfaced key cultural and segment nuances. A Guest Advisory Panel served as the final co-creation sounding board to validate and refine the winning positioning territory.
• Ultimately these inputs came together in a brand strategy brief to guide efforts moving forward.

Impact:

The client team embraced the refreshed brand elements, including a new brand house, mission, positioning, and a revised set of values that reflect the current target audience. HawkPartners’ brand strategy brief was employed to communicate these changes to critical internal and agency stakeholders who helped bring the positioning to life.

As a result of our work, the client successfully repositioned its brand to better connect and resonate with its target audience. The new positioning is currently being used to update the brand’s personality, visuals, service culture, experiences, marketing communications and programming to drive breakthrough growth in the hospitality space.