A Walk in the (National) Park!

Scribble a logo, bung out a website and ta-daah. You have a brand. And no customers – because, quite frankly, you've missed the point. You need a brand that reflects the product or service and appeals to the customer. You need to do a bit of research and have a discussion or three. You need to develop a brand. Not churn one out. Idealogy developed a brand recently with New Forest Hotels (NFH), a group consisting of four hotels in, you've guessed it, the New Forest. It was their 21st birthday and they wanted to update their image to reflect their new found maturity, their coming of age, as well as their ongoing investment in their hotels.

We kicked off with a BrandPrint™ workshop, where Idealogy's consultants met with key management from New Forest Hotels, including the hotels' managers. We discussed the existing brand, commercial goals, brand objectives, customers expectations, new and existing markets and how to target them, as well as additional routes to market, then followed this up with a chat about the individual hotels' personalities and physical attributes, and their competitors. In short, we established exactly who the hotel group is, where they fit, and where they want to be. It's also how we came up with the key phrase that sums up New Forest Hotels: True quality, naturally delivered.

Donning cunning disguises, account managers Anna Ecuyer and Nick Hart went undercover as a couple who were planning their wedding. They turned up at the group's main competitors and took notes that formed the basis of the competitor audit boards. These colourful boards allowed NFH to analyse what areas could be improved upon.

The next stage was to implement all the findings and create the logo. This forms the basis of the corporate identity so the debates over this were long and involved. Leaves from local trees were considered elements, as were silhouettes of forest animals, but in the end the butterfly with its four colours to reflect the changing seasons and the four hotels in the group was chosen. It provided the continuity that existing customers would ‘hang on to’ (the old logo included a butterfly) while showing a contemporary, forest-inspired face to new customers.

The completed identity document was then presented to a broad spectrum of the staff and the customer touchpoints were discussed, noting where improvements could be made and how staff could help bring the brand to life for their customers. We wrapped all this up with a guidelines document for current and future staff to refer to, ensuring consistency of style.

So there you have it, that's how a brand is developed. It takes a little longer than five minutes, but then we expect it to last longer than that too. A bit like the New Forest, in fact.

To find out how we used this information to develop a website that reflects the brand perfectly, as well as to discover what customers and staff think about it, then check back in a few weeks for the next update.

Posted by Anna Ecuyer