8/20/2019 Case Lilypad
1/3
Should Lilypad’s Hotels Be Marketed Under the Corporate Brand or
Their Own Brands?
LILYPAD HOTELS and Resorts could certainly create some
connections among its brands; the
business rationale for doing so is evident. However, Andre needs
to proceed with caution: It’s criticalthat any linkages don’t
compromise the value of the individual offerings. A plan to
emphasize the
corporate brand over the property brands might very well
backfire.
The implicit promise from each property is that no other hotel
in the area will offer guests the same
sort of culturally grounded travel experience. But how credible
can that one of-a-kind claim be if La
Plaza’s “handwoven” bathrobes are made in China and stamped with
the Lilypad logo? Once you
start making branding choices that don’t ring true or that
otherwise detract from the customer
experience, you’ve gone too far.
Lilypad’s brands are quite distinct in customers’ minds
– that’s their greatest strength.
So instead of making signifi cant and observable changes in the
rooms themselves, Lilypad’s
management team should emphasize changes behind the scenes to
help boost the co mpany’s
cross-sell numbers. The soft endorsements Lilypad is already
doing (putting its name on coat
hangers, for instance) may still infl uence customers’ behavior
over time.
But the company should also make better use of other
resources – specifically, the internet and
various players in the travel industry. By linking the
individual properties’ websites to the
corporate one, for instance, Lilypad would be able to give
customers more information about
the hotels. It might even engender a community of “brand fans.”
And by forging stronger
relationships with travel agents and the trade press, Lilypad
would be able to tell the corporate
story more comprehensively than it has in the past.
What’s clear, though, is that Andre and his team haven’t found
the right balance between the
company’s two approaches to brand management. Lilypad has been
espousing a strong bottom-up
approach: Managers at individual properties have used their own
marketing methods. This seems
to be working – Lilypad properties are on a best-of
list in a travel magazine, so someone is doing
something right. Now Lilypad’s VP of sales and marketing is
nudging the CEO toward a top -down
approach in which all brand promises fl ow from corporate. But
this is likely to fail without a
clear corporate brand strategy, which the company sorely
lacks.
Andre will need to position the Lilypad name broadly enough to
encompass all the company’s
diverse properties. Obviously, he should start with the current
brand promise and key in on the fact
that Lilypad is not trying to “out-luxe” its rivals. Rather, it
is offering distinctive cultural experiences
with decidedly local points of view. True, each property will do
this differently – but each must meet
overall expectations that customers will get something that’s
one of a kind.
Lilypad must also understand its target market better. Only
certain types of business travelers will
want and need the same things as typical leisure travelers.
Andre could take a closer look at
competitors’ branding strategies – although in many
cases it would be an apples-to-oranges
comparison. A company like Abercrombie & Kent emphasizes
unique, high - end travel experiences,
8/20/2019 Case Lilypad
2/3
too, but also touts “expertise” as part of its brand, offering
its hotel guests expert-led tours of the
Egyptian pyramids or the chance to play a game of polo with a
professional.
If Andre and his colleagues want to emphasize the corporate
brand, they need to be clear about
what it represents. They also need to remember that being part
of a large corporate structure
shouldn’t require Lilypad’s already successful properties to
make any sacrifices.
Andre should start with the current brand promise and key in on
the fact that Lilypad is not trying to
“out-luxe” its rivals.
Should Lilypad’s Hotels Be Marketed Under the Corporate Brand or
Their Own Brands?
A FORMER C EO of British Airways once told me that when he first
joined the airline, he thought
about the brand once a year. By the time his tenure was over,
five years later, he thought about it
once a day. That’s twenty-fi rst-century brand management in a
nutshell. At most companies, the
brand is an immensely valuable asset, but often CEOs have had
little formal training in this area. So
when someone from sales and marketing drops by and says, “I
think we need to do things
differently,” the chief executive is put in a diffi cult
position.
At Lilypad, Andre is becoming embroiled in the subjective and
emotional topic of company names
and identities. He and his colleagues aren’t objectively
considering the brand as a powerful asset,
there to leverage long-term business strategy. They are looking
at brand management in a surface
way, which frankly makes them not that different from a lot of
organizations – particularly midsize
businesses seeking McDonald’s or Disney levels of name, service,
and quality recognition. Instead of
approaching this branding matter as a name-change question,
Andre and his colleagues need to
systematically examine the corporate brand through a couple of
important lenses: customers and
culture.
Customers. It’s evident from the unfocused way Andre and others
talk about the Lilypad brand that
they don’t have a clear sense of the customer. At one point, the
individual properties are
characterized as feeding people’s desires and aspirations, which
casts the individual brands in
sentimental, emotional terms. But by the end of the case study,
Andre is thinking about Lilypad as
the best little secret in hotel management, which frames the
corporate brand in terms of execution
and operations. Great brands are single-minded about what makes
them different from others. To
get more clarity about whether the company should be, say, niche
and focused, it’s critical
to ask, “Who are Lilypad’s current customers, and what will
future customers look like?”
Market research can help. Interbrand created a value-based
modeling tool for a global hotel
company that was trying to answer brand questions similar to
Lilypad’s. The tool uncovered how
value was generated at different properties by determining the
optimal relationship between
customer-satisfaction scores and customer-experience
attributes.
The top team was then able to make a strong business case for
new branding investments – which
have resulted in significant increases in sales and
cross-property usage.
Ultimately, how Lilypad positions itself vis-à-vis its customers
will have a huge bearing on its future
as a brand. Take the Virgin brand: It’s not exclusively about
airlines or beverages or broadband
