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11-2014

Brand Revitalization Chekitan S. Dev Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, [email protected]

Kevin Lane Keller Dartmouth College

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Recommended Citation Dev, C. S., & Keller, K. L. (2001). Brand revitalization. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 55(4). 333-341. doi:10.1177/ 1938965514525681

Brand Revitalization

Abstract In this essay, we discuss brand revitalization in the context of a revitalization process undertaken by of one of India’s iconic hotel brands: The Park Hotels. The leadership team of The Park Hotels, in collaboration with well-known brand-consulting firm Landor, undertook a two-year process to revitalize an already well- established brand in the face of severe competitive threat and changing customer tastes. This article presents a seven-step process for The Park’s brand revitalization effort, which begins with strategy and ends with implementation. The seven steps are (1) conduct a comprehensive brand audit, (2) determine the brand position, (3) develop the brand platform, (4) establish the brand beliefs, (5) evoke the brand experience, (6) develop the brand voice, and (7) launch the new brand. This essay, the first ever to lift the veil on a proprietary hospitality branding project, depicts how The Park addressed its particular strategic approach of tying together a set of distinctive boutique hotels with a unifying and inspiring brand position.

Keywords hospitality branding, marketing, advertising, service innovation, service experience training

Disciplines Hospitality Administration and Management | Marketing

Comments Required Publisher Statement © Cornell University. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

This article or chapter is available at The Scholarly Commons: https://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/articles/777

Cornell Hospitality Quarterly 2014, Vol. 55(4) 333 –341 © The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1938965514525681 cqx.sagepub.com

Invited Article

Every brand risks the possibility that it will lose its vitality, no matter how powerful and successful a brand may be. Because of this, the world’s longest lasting successful brands all need to revitalize their concept and message from time to time to adapt to changing trends, meet the needs and desires of contemporary consumers, and deal with new competitive threats. Brands that fail to do this often fade quietly from the marketplace and are soon forgotten.

One key to brand revitalization is to stay ahead of the curve—that is, to begin the renewal process long before the brand actually begins to fade. That is the situation in this study, which demonstrates how The Park Hotels, one of India’s leading hotel companies, revitalized its brand in rec- ognition of current and future strategic and competitive challenges. Our analysis of this effort rests on a seven-step brand revitalization process, which has been developed over time.

Many researchers and consultants have proposed and applied various brand revitalization processes. Light and Kiddon (2009), for example, applied a six-step analysis of a brand revitalization by McDonald’s. Those steps were (1) refocus the organization, (2) restore brand relevance, (3) reinvent the brand experience, (4) reinforce a results cul- ture, (5) rebuild brand trust, and (6) realize the global align- ment. Murane (2012) proposed a seven-step process: (1) agree on the problem, (2) negotiate the time horizon to fix the problem, (3) acquire resources, (4) align to trends, (5) bet on winning technology, (6) reframe the brand strategy, (7) develop effective marketing communications. We see the value of the thirteen steps mentioned in these two

frameworks, and our seven-step process includes many similar actions. But the steps in the above frameworks seem uneven in terms of sequence and work to be done. For instance, Murane’s step six, reframing the brand strategy, is by itself a driving force in brand revitalization that includes many steps. However, several smaller steps in these frame- works can be combined, as we explain below. Valuable as these multistep processes might be, we demonstrate that brand strategy must be the starting point for the brand revi- talization process.

Brand Revitalization: The 7 Steps

As we said, the brand revitalization process adopted by The Park Hotels comprised seven steps, designed to build upon determination of a new brand strategy and then continue by developing tactics to make that strategy operational. The seven steps to brand revitalization as they were applied by the brand team at The Park Hotels are as follows: (1) con- duct a brand audit, (2) determine the brand position, (3) develop the brand platform, (4) establish the brand beliefs, (5) evoke the brand experience, (6) develop the brand voice, and (7) launch the new brand. We see this process as logical

525681CQXXXX10.1177/1938965514525681Cornell Hospitality QuarterlyDev and Keller research-article2014

1Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA 2Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA

Corresponding Author: Chekitan S. Dev, School of Hotel Administration, Cornell University, 244 Statler Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA. Email: [email protected]

Brand Revitalization

Chekitan S. Dev1 and Kevin Lane Keller2

Abstract In this essay, we discuss brand revitalization in the context of a revitalization process undertaken by of one of India’s iconic hotel brands: The Park Hotels. The leadership team of The Park Hotels, in collaboration with well-known brand-consulting firm Landor, undertook a two-year process to revitalize an already well-established brand in the face of severe competitive threat and changing customer tastes. This article presents a seven-step process for The Park’s brand revitalization effort, which begins with strategy and ends with implementation. The seven steps are (1) conduct a comprehensive brand audit, (2) determine the brand position, (3) develop the brand platform, (4) establish the brand beliefs, (5) evoke the brand experience, (6) develop the brand voice, and (7) launch the new brand. This essay, the first ever to lift the veil on a proprietary hospitality branding project, depicts how The Park addressed its particular strategic approach of tying together a set of distinctive boutique hotels with a unifying and inspiring brand position.

Keywords Hospitality branding; marketing; advertising; service innovation; service experience training

334 Cornell Hospitality Quarterly 55(4)

and incremental, as each step depends in part on what is accomplished in the preceding step, gradually modifying and refining the revitalization until it achieves the desired objective. We depict the seven-step approach in Exhibit 1.

Step 1: The Park’s Brand Audit

Any major rebranding effort must begin with a brand audit, which creates a thorough understanding of where a brand has been, where it is now, and how it got there. A brand audit is a comprehensive examination of a brand to assess its health, uncover its sources of equity, and suggest ways to improve and expand on that equity (Keller 2013). The Park’s brand audit, conducted by the branding firm Landor, began with a thorough review of every facet of The Park’s history and current operations, focusing on its brand com- munications and positioning.

History. The Park Hotels was a division of Apeejay Sur- rendra Group, a multisector corporation with a history dat- ing to 1910. Privately held by the Paul family, Apeejay Surrendra had interests in trading, shipping, tea, retail, real estate, construction, and steel, in addition to its hotel busi- ness. The Park Hotels came into being in 1967 with the introduction of The Park Kolkata, a landmark property which was named after one of the city’s iconic streets (Dixit and Manikutty 2001). For years, Surrendra Paul ran The Park, but in 1990, he was tragically killed in a terrorist attack. As a result, his daughter, Priya Paul, found herself in charge at the age of twenty-four. At that time, there were two other hotel properties under The Park name (Gupta and Ramachandran 2010).

Current operations. The Park opened its first truly boutique hotel in Bangalore in 2000, although Paul had already begun distinguishing her properties with innovative service and design elements, such as an intimate guest departure experience, a more casual, friendly approach to employee– guest interactions, a trendy, gourmet Chinese restaurant with a distinctive design, and a vibrant, popular nightclub featuring live music. The next boutique property converted the famous Gemini Film Studio’s building into a hotel and enlivened the South Indian movie capital of Chennai by incorporating cinematic themes throughout. New boutique hotels in Navi Mumbai and Hyderabad followed. In the meantime, existing properties in New Delhi and Kolkata were renovated to embrace the boutique approach as well (see Exhibit 2). The Park continued to expand during the first decade of the 2000s, so that soon after passing into its second decade, the firm’s portfolio would expand to thir- teen properties (see Exhibit 3). The expansion was planned to continue under a strategic approach it called “Twenty by Twenty”(i.e., twenty properties by the year 2020).

Each of its properties exhibited, or would be designed to exhibit, their own qualities of Indian culture and its interac- tions with the world. For example, The Park Bangalore incorporated the Indian silk industry into its design, while each floor was made to represent a distinct facet of the urban landscape. The Park Navi Mumbai embraced an East- meets-West theme to represent the city’s history of cultural fusion, while The Park Hyderabad stood out with striking design elements representing the Nizam jewels and the state’s distinctive textiles. For its part, The Park New Delhi’s design incorporated the five elements of the Indian space design science of Vastu Shastra (akin to Chinese Feng

Exhibit 1:

The Seven-Step Brand Revitalization Framework.

Brand Audit

Brand Posi�oning

Brand Pla�orm

Brand Beliefs

Brand Experience

Brand Voice

Brand Launch

Dev and Keller 335

Shui). The renovated The Park Kolkata expanded its night- life and restaurant offerings.

Brand communication. The Park’s thread-theme logos attempted to capture in one image—or set of images—what made each of the properties distinctive and what they had in common (see Exhibit 4). Soon after taking over manage- ment of The Park Hotels, though, Paul understood that the properties needed better coordination. So, the company issued common service manuals to employees at all proper- ties, held frequent meetings with representatives from all property management teams, and introduced a common res- ervation system (Dixit and Manikutty 2001). The boutique model was taking shape and providing The Park with the differentiation it sought.

As the first decade of the 2000s played out, The Park grew its portfolio to thirteen properties. By comparison with other brands in its several markets, The Park held its own and in some categories, such as occupancy and

revenue per available room (RevPAR), led the competitive set for the March 2012–March 2013 period. Exhibit 5 shows The Park leading in seven categories across three markets. The Park’s performance over a longer period when measured across its markets shows similarly strong performance.

Brand positioning. While The Park was a major force in the Indian hospitality market, it was facing a new competitive landscape that would soon be flooded with a massive influx of brands, many of which would begin to crowd its space (see Exhibits 6 and 7). For example, Starwood had seven new properties slated to open in India, Hyatt was planning to enter fifteen new Indian markets over a five-year period, Marriott had nearly a hundred new properties slated to open over the same time span, and InterContinental envisioned 150 new Indian hotels by 2020 (Landor Associates 2011).

Based on the brand audit, the branding team identified two areas of concern for The Park brand: (1) the boutique model no longer provided the differentiation it once had, and (2) its desire to make every property distinctive created a lack of central brand focus and inconsistency in the cus- tomer experience across the properties.

Step 2: The Park’s New Brand Positioning

Even though the brand was strong, the audit demonstrated that The Park needed a fresh brand positioning. The Park’s first-mover advantage, which had stood it in good stead, was eroding. The broad diversity of facilities and amenities that emphasized style and service worked against the core brand concept in some cases. Moreover, certain enterprises were drawing walk-in customers but not bringing in over- night guests. Among these were the nightclub in Kolkata, Someplace Else, which was marketed as India’s premier live music venue, and restaurants such as Zen at The Park Kolkata and i-Italia at The Park Bangalore, which offered innovative cuisine that made them comparatively more popular than the hotels themselves.

The branding team recognized that in spite of the success of The Park’s boutique positioning, the company lacked a unified and inspiring brand positioning that could support its plans to expand its portfolio into new Indian markets. Based on this realization, they chose “Anything but Ordinary” as the new brand position (see Exhibit 8).

In the next phase of the project, a full visual audit of all properties and their competitive sets was completed to form a basis for developing options for refreshing the brand and providing all properties in The Park’s portfolio with a single brand identity that would bring its hotels’ seemingly dispa- rate customer experiences together under one set of princi- ples and its messages under a new brand platform.

Exhibit 2:

The Park Hotels in New Delhi and Kolkata.

336 Cornell Hospitality Quarterly 55(4)

Step 3: The Park’s New Brand Platform

After reviewing the competitive landscape, global hospital- ity trends, and emerging consumer segment to identify guests and employees that would be attracted to this brand, the team examined options for a brand platform. A review

of competitors underscored the extent to which the boutique aesthetic and business model were permeating the market (Dev 2012). Brand after brand used boutique-related phras- ing, such as Devi, “Boutique, designer”; Neemrana, “Boutique” and “Living with History”; W Hotels, “Confident, Trendy”; and Marriott’s Edition brand, “Luxury,

Exhibit 4:

The Park’s Logo Set, Prior to Brand Revitalization.

Exhibit 3:

The Park Hotel Properties—2013.

Dev and Keller 337

Exhibit 6:

The Park’s Competitive Set in 2010.

Exhibit 5:

The Park’s Key Performance Indicators.

Market share analysis—April 2012–March 2013

Property Fair

share Market share ARR

Market leader ARR

Occupancy %

Market leader

occupancy % RevPAR

Market leader

RevPAR PI Market

leader PI

Growth over last year (%)

The Park New Delhi

6.45 8.62 5,762 13,642 The Imperial

78 79% Le

Meridien

4,686 9,092 The Imperial

1.34 Leader −19

The Park Chennai

14.01 14.14 5,098 7,664 Taj

Coromandel

61 68% Courtyard

by Marriott

3,112 4,577 Taj

Coromandel

1.01 1.12 Courtyard

by Marriott

–3

The Park Kolkata

25.21 29.54 6,076 7,368 Taj Bengal

89 Leader 5,390 Leader 1.17 Leader –1

The Park Bangalore

4.66 5.47 5,500 11,632 Taj

Westend

65 73% Taj

Residency

3,561 8,342 Taj Westend

1.17 1.33 Taj

Residency

–11

The Park Visakhapatnam

11.81 17.55 4,278 4,636 Grand Bay

87 Leader 3,712 Leader 1.49 Leader –6

The Park Navi Mumbai

25.18 24.95 4,147 4,947 Four Points

70 72% Four

Points

2,825 3,539 Four Points

0.99 1.04 Four

Points

5

The Park Hyderabad

32.91 26.88 4,761 5,976 Taj Krishna

40 63% Taj Banjara

1,898 2,639 Taj Krishna

0.82 1.30 Taj Banjara

14

Note. ARR = average room rate; RevPAR = revenue per available room; PI = Penetration Index.

338 Cornell Hospitality Quarterly 55(4)

Exhibit 8:

The Park’s New Brand Positioning—“Anything but Ordinary.”

Exhibit 7:

The Park’s New Competitive Set.

Dev and Keller 339

Boutique.” Clearly, The Park needed to find its way to a new differentiator that would transcend the boutique image and touch all of its properties.

In developing a platform for the brand revitalization ini- tiative, the team examined The Park’s points of parity, advantage, and difference vis-à-vis the competition. The point of parity centered on elements that make a property “boutique.” The point of advantage was the incorporation of Indian elements in its design features, and the points of difference, which provided the inspiration for The Park’s new brand platform, were: not cookie cutter, art, music, dance, literature, fashion scene, urban, trendy, happening, buzzing, and creative.

Step 4: The Park’s New Brand Beliefs

As a next step, The Park branding team adopted “Four Brand Beliefs” to bring the platform to life. According to the Brand Beliefs, everything The Park would offer its guests would be “Creatively inspiring,” “Spontaneously joyous,” or “Daringly different,” and all services and prod- ucts would embody the spirit of “Making things fun” (see Exhibit 9).

Once the branding platform and beliefs were adopted, The Park’s team began to examine how the new brand strat- egy would produce the new customer experience, which in turn would improve brand perception and customer behav- ior, ultimately driving improved business performance. Employees were advised that in the path from strategy to performance, the key was an “on brand” customer experi- ence, as we discuss next.

Step 5: The Park’s New Brand Experience

To craft the new brand experiences, the team needed to fully understand its target customers. For this they developed,

profiles of the guests that the new brand positioning would target, both domestic and international. The target domestic traveler was an upscale executive capable of becoming a loyal guest on a long-term basis, someone who enjoys lux- ury, entertainment, and fine food and drink. The target for- eign traveler was perhaps a bit younger, equally upscale, and upwardly mobile. These travelers seek out social encounters and local color, and they would be likely to rec- ommend The Park to others.

As part of the brand experience, the next step in the pro- cess was to pair the “Anything but Ordinary” concept with the right logo and communications approach. The logo and communications would convey the conceptual space cre- ated by the Four Brand Beliefs and the desire to marry con- temporary Indian culture with upscale sensory stimuli that would make it fun to stay at The Park. For consistency, the team determined that it was important to embrace the brand name, “The Park,” in a conspicuous way to differentiate it from the scores of other Park-named hotel brands.

The Park’s team decided that they wanted to emphasize the special qualities of The Park, perhaps to remind custom- ers of Paul’s pioneering boutique approach to the Indian hospitality market, but especially to emphasize that The Park brand had a deep history of providing Anything but Ordinary hotel experiences for its guests. They therefore selected the emblem that Landor described as “unexpect- edly simple,” a stark block letter logo that emphasized the word “the,” as the differentiator of The Park, as shown in Exhibit 10.

Among the unique amenities and experiences The Park’s team envisioned were the “Work Bed,” which offered the opportunity to conduct business comfortably from the guest room, and “The Park Pad,” a tablet computer to be pre- sented to the guest on arrival that would serve as a “virtual concierge” for the duration of the stay. Some properties would feature curated movie libraries (inspired by The Park

Exhibit 9:

The Park’s New Brand Beliefs.

340 Cornell Hospitality Quarterly 55(4)

Chennai), while special seasonally and locally flavored popsicles would be offered to guests in the lobby upon arrival to enjoy during the streamlined check-in process.

Step 6: The Park’s New Brand Voice

Once the brand experiences were defined, the next step was to create a language for the employees to enable them to live the brand. Developing a brand voice helps train employ- ees to talk about The Park in a manner that is consistent with the new brand identity in all customer-facing commu- nications. A set of voice guidelines were developed that employees should follow whenever they interacted with customers and that would guide all forms of communica- tion (see Exhibit 11).

Step 7: The Park’s New Brand Launch

An important decision that the branding team had to make was when and how to reveal the new brand to the world. In this, the brand team decided to “go big” by launching the new brand at the preeminent global travel event, the Berlin International Tourism Bourse (ITB). The revitalized brand was first unveiled to rave reviews at the March 2013 ITB Berlin. The CEO of Design Hotels, an association of

designer inspired hotels, praised Priya Paul for a truly out- standing brand presentation.

Lessons from The Park Hotels’ Brand Revitalization Journey

Brand revitalization is often a combination of the old and the new, retaining key existing brand elements and adding important new components. The Park Hotels had achieved much success, but in the face of a new competitive chal- lenge the company needed a comprehensive brand audit to determine what to stop doing, what to start doing, and what to continue doing and do it better. The resulting revitaliza- tion of the Park Hotel brand provides a number of useful lessons about how an iconic brand should be strengthened and managed in tough times. Here are four of them.

Strike the right balance. One of the most important objectives in managing a brand is striking the right balance between features that pull the brand too much in one direction or another. The sweet spot in brand- ing is often devising and implementing “win-win solutions” that overcome seemingly irreconcilable objectives. Critical to The Park Hotel’s success was striking the balance between uniformity and individu- ality, between consistency and surprise. Different hotel properties had to share enough common ele- ments to support the brand concept, yet also have dis- tinctive characteristics that uniquely reflected their locale and local clientele.

Create compelling “best of both worlds” positions. In a related sense, some of the most powerful brand posi- tions cleverly combine two things that do not always

Exhibit 11:

The Park’s New Brand Voice Guidelines.

Exhibit 10:

The Park’s New Brand Emblem.

Dev and Keller 341

seem to go together. In that regard, The Park Hotels developed a powerful value proposition by blending Indian heritage and a respectful state of mind, on one hand, with a youthful outlook that positively reflected modern Indian life, on the other hand. A classic but contemporary image can create a “timeless” brand with strong appeal to both young and old, Indian and foreign.

Offer a set of related, but distinct points of difference. Strong brands design and implement a cohesive brand positioning with multiple points of difference. Points of difference are strong, favorable, and distinct attri- bute or benefit associations for a brand that are (1) desirable from a customer point of view, (2) deliver- able from a company point of view, and (3) differen- tiating from a competitive point of view. Multiple points of difference that are related—but also dis- tinct—paint a rich picture of the brand in the minds of consumers. The Park Hotels adopted a powerful branding platform coupled with seven strong differ- entiators related to their people, the nature of activi- ties at and design theme of their properties, and the portfolio strategy across their properties. Collectively, these seven differentiators provide compelling and unique motivation to prospective or returning guests.

Inform and enforce the brand with brand filters or guardrails. Finally, establishing an effective brand position and fulfilling the brand promise requires more than conducting the right strategic analysis. A thorough implementation plan is also critical. In par- ticular, well-conceived and communicated brand fil- ters must guide employees and staff in the organization and help them make better decisions which promote the long-term health of the brand. The Four Brand Beliefs serve that function and are the guardrails to keep the brand moving forward in the right direction.

Acknowledgment

Professor Chekitan S. Dev is grateful to The Park Hotels and Landor for permission to share the details of the brand revitaliza- tion process and thanks Bill Barnett for his assistance.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, or publication of this article. Professor Chekitan S. Dev acknowledges financial support for this project from the Cornell Center for Hospitality Research.

References

Dev, Chekitan S. 2012. Hospitality Branding. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Dixit, M. R., and S. Manikutty. 2001. The Park, Calcutta. Ahmedabad: Indian Institute of Management.

Gupta, Seema, and J. Ramachandran. 2010. The Park Hotels: Designing communications. Bangalore: Indian Institute of Management.

Keller, Kevin Lane. 2013. Strategic Brand Management: Building, measuring, and managing brand equity. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall.

Landor Associates. 2011. Insights presentation: The hospitality game in India is changing. Issue: July 26, p. 2.

Light, Larry, and Joan Kiddon. 2009. Six rules for brand revital- ization: Learn how companies like McDonald’s can re-ener- gize their brands. Upper Saddle River: Pearson-Prentice Hall.

Murane, Peter. 2012. 7 steps to revitalize your brand. brandjuice. com/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2012/06/BrandJuice_ whitepaper_revitalize_v2.pdf (accessed January 31, 2014).

Author Biographies

Chekitan S. Dev, Ph.D., is an associate professor of marketing and branding at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration. Winner of several teaching and research awards, he has published over 100 papers in leading journals including the Harvard Business Review, Journal of Marketing, and the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, and is the author of Hospitality Branding (Cornell University Press, 2012). He has served corporate, gov- ernment, education, advisory, and private equity clients in over forty countries on six continents as consultant, seminar leader, and expert witness. In 2010, he was selected as one of the “Top 25 Most Extraordinary Minds in Hospitality, Travel and Tourism Sales and Marketing” by HSMAI ([email protected]).

Kevin Lane Keller, Ph.D., is the E. B. Osborn Professor of Marketing at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and is the author of Strategic Brand Management, a widely used text on brand management. He has published his research in the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, and Journal of Consumer Research. In addition, Philip Kotler selected him to be his co-author on the most recent edition of Kotler’s market- leading text Marketing Management. In the private sector, Professor Keller often acts as a consultant on branding and speaks at industry conferences ([email protected]).