I have spent most of the last 15 years trying to convince others that service brands are more than marketing, communication and packaging: in short, service brands are not created by what you say about yourself, but by what you do and the way you do it.
And yet the brand marketing love-in continues and billions of dollars of marketing money gets thrown down the drain each year because marketing promises have little in common with the reality of the guest experience.
So I decided to journey into the world of hospitality marketing. If it’s as important to brand building as the majority make it out to be, it must be done really well, I mused, even if the images and words bear no relation to the real world. At least give me something compelling and distinctive to look at, even if it leaves me questioning the credibility of the claims.
I’m now back from my jaunt into hotel marketing land and — despite the odd moment of inspiration and refreshment provided by some brands during my viewing — I am desperately in need of a double espresso before reporting my findings.
First, I am able to confirm that the more upmarket brands of the major global hospitality groups provide beds, showers, food, wine, check-in services, reception areas and staff.
I know this because in each of the videos I peered at on YouTube there were some very nice shots of fluffy pillows, steaming hot water, smiling receptionists, yummy-looking food and expensive-looking wine.
So at least you know you’re going to get this when you stay with any of these brands, which might be considered a good, if rather obvious start. I sense that most guests know that that they will get a bed and a shower in an upscale hotel, so why bother to show them, particularly when you know all your competitors are showing the very same things?
No matter, at least these attributes should form the underpinning for a truly distinctive (while also relevant and compelling) proposition for each of the brands.
It’s true there are some distinctive ideas amid the dross: The W chain’s advertising reflects its seductively unique nature, Westin has made the communication of health and rejuvenation something of its own, Mandarin Oriental continues to ply its singular and simple “fan” campaign, and Shangri-La gave us wolves and snow in its groundbreaking “It’s In Our Nature” TV commercial (although the industry jury is still out on whether this is what Shangri-La is really all about).
As for the rest? These are some of the more “memorable” out-takes of what each brand seems to be saying is its raison d’être. “Where connections make everything happen”, “Travel should take you places”, “Energy, Precision & Passion”, “We do everything we can to help you relax and be yourself”, “Life is Magnifique”, “For Connoisseurs of the Art of Living” and “Check-in, Chill-out”.
Now you may feel that nibbling snippets out of a finely crafted piece of a three-minute video is unreasonable, because they have been presented out of context. But I invite you to follow my path to YouTubeville and take a look yourself. And when you come back, by all means let me know if you can decipher what in heaven’s name each of the brands is talking about, whether it has any relevance to you, whether it inspires you and whether you can honestly tell one from another.
Each video is utterly lost in sea of safety and conformity. The people responsible for creating them are the fence-sitters of the marketing world: oh so afraid not to mingle with others at the top table of global brands. Terribly nice. Terribly friendly. Terribly tedious.
But one can’t blame the marketers alone as to some degree they need to be inspired by a truly distinctive set of guest experiences. Sadly in the majority of cases they are not, as a pre-Christmas edition of The Economist pointed out when commenting on “industrial hotels”: those chains that grew into global animals from the 1960s onward:
“Over the years their uniformity has made them an emotional failure. Because of their impersonal blandness, frequent travellers have less fealty than pirates. They carry not one but several loyalty cards and spend only half or less of their budgets with one chain, according to Deloitte. ‘Unless I see a brand sign on the door I can’t tell the difference,’ one hotel boss himself admits.”
If the hoteliers themselves can’t tell the difference, there’s absolutely no way the guest will be able to either.
The irony of all this is that in the world of hospitality the large groups are referred to as “The Brands”, while one-offs or small groups are referred to as “unbranded”. Yet it is the latter that provide the strongest examples of great hospitality brands: Grammercy Park in New York, The Upper House in Hong Kong, The Hoxton in London, Room Mate Hotels from Spain, Mal Maison Hotels from Britain.
Each brand is relevant, compelling, distinctive and credible: in other words they deliver what they say they’re going to deliver and what they say they will deliver is in many ways unique. And each brand has a deeply passionate following of loyal repeat customers who fell and remain in love with the distinctive way in which their brand partner dances with them.
But, despite the seeming paucity of distinctive brand ideas from the major hotel groups, I remain bemused by the lack of more imaginative communications ideas that at least try to clothe these hotel brand commodities in something more enticing. The world of fast-moving consumer goods is awash with commoditisation, yet there are many wonderfully striking communications ideas floating around on the web, through TV and print media that memorably set them apart from the competition.
Perhaps the fact that this is less evident in hospitality is because the major hotel groups don’t see themselves as commodities. Perhaps they really think they are fundamentally different as brands as well as businesses and that by communicating the reality of the guest experience they will evoke what sets them apart from those who compete with them for the customers’ hearts and dollars.
What this does in reality is reinforce how similar they all are, which is the exact opposite of what a brand requires in order to outperform.
James Stuart is the managing partner of The Brand Company and can be reached by email at james@thebrandco.com. For more information see: www.thebrandco.com