luxury , in general . We found out that this notion of luxury being authoritarian was a bit bogged down for the guests that we wanted to go after . This notion of leading with a genuine heart was something that was incredibly relevant for the guests that know the brand really well and much engrained into how they loved interacting with the brand .
The insights we gathered was that folks love to be welcomed , treated as a special guest , but also almost welcomed as a friend … We want to make sure that we ’ re creating this sense of belonging as almost the definition of how we define luxury … Small acts of unscripted empathy , those small acts of love , make a difference , and sometimes they make a much bigger difference than making a big splash … All of this is encapsulated into this campaign .
H : How is this more than a marketing campaign ? MS : It seems like kind of a brand repositioning . So , we tried to encapsulate that into a what we call an enduring creative idea . This is something that we want to build over time , that we want to stick to , and that very much is part of the brand positioning … This was very much done with marketing teams , but also with the general managers and the heads of HR . It ’ s a much broader way of making sure that we ’ re all consistently talking and living the brand and then translating that into creative work that is going to be there for a number of years because we think it has the potential to be a true , enduring creative idea .
H : This time of media amplification is a first for Four Seasons . Why so ? MS : This has been a first for us on a couple of different levels . The first is that we anchored it into the guest ’ s understanding , probably more so than ever before , because we understand our guests now better than ever before . Any kind of work that we ’ re doing is very much informed by that guest ’ s understanding and it is a key driver behind this .
The second shift was considering how to amplify our message in a way that cuts through in a very competitive environment . Again , we didn ’ t benchmark ourselves versus the hospitality brands in the luxury space ; we really benchmark ourselves versus all luxury brands because that ’ s our aspiration moving forward .
Then , how do we dial up to make sure we maintain and grow that lead through our competitive set in the hospitality space and start to show up as a complete luxury brand . In certain instances , we have very high levels of brand awareness and brand preference . And in some other instances , we have businesses where we have lower brand awareness and brand preference scores … We stepped deeper into retail more recently , where we think we have a lot of potential . But it requires us to drive the brand awareness and preference in those spaces so that we can credibly show up as a more complete luxury brand .
The third piece works hand-in-hand with making sure that what we ’ re doing
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