Brand Bible

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BRAND BIBLE250

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Great branding involves great storytelling, and that’s

what theater is all about. At its core, branding, too,

is about getting on stage and telling an amazing,

indelible story. Up until recently, we didn’t talk about

theatricality and stagecraft in the world of brands.

But in my experience, stagecraft can become a palpa-

ble form of witchcraft when it comes to branding

because there’s an alchemy that happens—there’s a

certain magic or pixie dust that people use in order to

create these moments that become forever locked in

your memory and tied up with your emotions.

23

how To Brand

a hoTel



Scott Williams

Founder and

President/

Scott Williams & Co.

Developing cachet

through innovation—

and discovering

the obvious

All photos by Scott Williams & Co.

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All photos by Scott Williams & Co.

How to Brand a Hotel

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

The rst issue when I started was the Starwood

brand. The only thing dening the brand was the

customer loyalty program, Starwood Preferred

Guest. The program had a unique point of view and

oered benets such as no black-out dates, and we

had to make sure the focus was on highlighting these

killer brand equities because we were being outspent

four to one by our competition in the hospitality

arena. We constantly had to prioritize those benets

so we didn’t represent ourselves as a commodity. It’s

so easy to become a points program where your iden-

tity seems to be about giving away free stu. Givea-

ways don’t necessarily generate brand loyalty. In

fact, most of the time, this approach has the opposite

eect. If you look at the great premium brands, one of

the strongest loyalty factors—which is key to building

a cult around the brand—is that people are willing to

pay a little bit more because they have a love and an

almost irrational attraction for the brand.

The second priority was to contend with the fact

that many of our divisions had their own agencies,

and as a result, there were some inconsistencies

in the brand platforms. For instance, Westin had a

campaign running in Japan and Korea when I arrived

that hadn’t run in North America for a couple of

years. We walked a very ne line of making sure that

the general managers could control their own busi-

nesses but when business travelers went from North

America to Japan, the messaging was inconsistent,

and we wanted a global look and feel. But we didn’t



Promotional material

for the Sheraton Hotel



Website redesign for

Morgans Hotel Group

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