Arriving at our workshop one by one, the client team greeted each other warmly. Their first real reunion in months. The intense summer season had seen them scattered across the group’s properties and hotels in the Cyclades and the Peloponnese. Now it was October: time to take stock and plan for the future.
This future required a name change for the hotel group. Not an easy feat, especially after so many years of success. But the existing group name wasn’t ownable – indeed, it was shared with a competitor.
This had meant that up until now, all the focus had been placed on the brands of the individual hotels within the collection. The group brand was underused and this was a missed opportunity.
As they grew their portfolio, our client wanted the group brand to endorse and connect all of their hotels, helping to cross-sell between locations, to build a community of guests loyal to the group (not just an individual hotel), and to strengthen the internal family culture.
The goal of our workshop wasn’t to find the name. Instead, it was to explore the ideas that the name should represent. To unearth what lay at the heart of the new brand. These ideas would create the brief not just for the new name, but also for the visual identity and brand messaging.
We started with Purpose. Why do we exist? Why does the world need us to exist? We broke this down with three big, intersecting circles on a flip chart: ‘Passion’ ‘Skill’ ‘Zeitgeist’.
We split into three groups and brainstormed using Post-it notes. Only one rule: each Post-it needed to include a verb. Passive nouns and adjectives were no good – every idea needs some action to be useful.
We discussed the output from each group and then did one more task before lunch. Complete the sentence “We are here to…”. This wasn’t about christening the perfect purpose statement but getting everyone in the room to write a single line. One seed of an idea. An invitation from each participant to share their ideas and to be part of the process.
Everyone scribbled with hungry energy. And then, once the Post-its had landed, we left for a walk: to a Cycladic lunch and to the future.
