Creative Renewal

A leading hotelier came to Ferrazzi Greenlight with the following problem: The company had made a major reinvestment in its product but it wasn't resulting in buzz or improved business. Unfortunately, the market perception was that the hotel was lagging behind its competitive set.

The company needed to energize its marketing strategy to reintroduce its hotels to the public as leaders in comfort and service. It didn't want to pursue this goal via a "heads will roll", threat-oriented approach. Rather, they presented the need for change as a shared challenge among the current ad agency, public relations firm, events company, direct marketing team, and executives.
 
The challenge presented to Ferrazzi Greenlight was threefold:

• Push the team to re-engineer its creative process, improving coordination among the different vendors.
• Energize the team to break through the noise in the market  so that their new product enhancements could change perceptions
• Align all segments of the team, including the operations group responsible for product enhancements, to think creatively and cooperatively about the brand.

We designed and facilitated a "creative summit' among all creative components, led by our staff and the company's chief of marketing. After a clear declaration of the problem, we led a session focused on rethinking the brand. Group problem solving sparked innovation and creativity. As well, we laid groundwork to improve internal communication going forward, via new mediums that included a staff blog.

Afterward the summit, Ferrazzi Greenlight synthesized the output and added our own, then convened a second event to review and build concrete steps toward the new strategy. The company approved a dozen tactics for implementation. The new campaign, centered on communicating a unique understanding of the customer and his priorities, achieved greater buzz and marketing activity in the subsequent period.