Should Lilypads 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: Its critical
that any linkages dont compromise the value of the individual offerings. A plan to emphasize the
corporate brand over the property brands might very well backre.
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
Plazas handwoven bathrobes are made in China and stamped with the Lilypad logo? Once you
start making branding choices that dont ring true or that otherwise detract from the customer
experience, youve gone too far.
Lilypads brands are quite distinct in customers minds thats their greatest strength.
So instead of making signi cant and observable changes in the rooms themselves, Lilypads
management team should emphasize changes behind the scenes to help boost the companys
cross-sell numbers. The soft endorsements Lilypad is already doing (putting its name on coat
hangers, for instance) may still in uence customers behavior over time.
But the company should also make better use of other resources specically, 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.
Whats clear, though, is that Andre and his team havent found the right balance between the
companys 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 Lilypads VP of sales and marketing is nudging the CEO toward a top-down
approach in which all brand promises 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 companys
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 thats 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,

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
shouldnt require Lilypads already successful properties to make any sacrices.
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 Lilypads Hotels Be Marketed Under the Corporate Brand or Their Own Brands?
A FORMER C EO of British Airways once told me that when he rst joined the airline, he thought
about the brand once a year. By the time his tenure was over, ve years later, he thought about it
once a day. Thats twenty- 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 dif cult position.
At Lilypad, Andre is becoming embroiled in the subjective and emotional topic of company names
and identities. He and his colleagues arent 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 McDonalds 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. Its evident from the unfocused way Andre and others talk about the Lilypad brand that
they dont have a clear sense of the customer. At one point, the individual properties are
characterized as feeding peoples 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, its critical
to ask, Who are Lilypads 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 Lilypads. 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 signicant increases in sales and cross-property usage.
Ultimately, how Lilypad positions itself vis--vis its customers will have a huge bearing on its future
as a brand. Take the Virgin brand: Its not exclusively about airlines or beverages or broadband

connections. The brand attribute shared by these disparate business lines is Virgins commitment to
serving customers.
Culture. At Lilypad, each property manager is a warlord in charge of his own efdom. Thats one
of the rst things Andres going to have to change if he wants to build a global brand and I think
he recognizes how dif cult that will be. It will require the orchestration of everyone who in some
way touches the Lilypad customer people in billing, design, sales and acquisitions, and so on. Andre
will also need to get buy-in from the senior leaguers across these different constituencies.
Otherwise he wont just have a not-invented here problem; hell have a not-executed-here
problem.If Lilypads senior managers increase the role of the corporate brand, they will also create
certain expectations among customers. And if the business isnt aligned to deliver on those
expectations, the result will be, at best, a wasted name-change investment and at worst, deeply
unhappy customers.