When a word is worth $50,000

A global hotel chain uses brand language to protect a multi-million dollar brand redesign

Chinese Whispers is a fun game when you’re a child. But it can quickly become a nightmare when you’re the person responsible for leading the global implementation of a new brand.

The Senior VP, Marketing, of an America-based, global hotel chain had worked with his team for 10 months to completely reimagine their brand: they would be changing everything from the architecture to the soap.

We were asked how language could capture the very valuable IP they’d developed, so that the new brand would be delivered consistently with no wasted time or money.

Every word matters

For any company, the majority of its intellectual property is defined verbally. But for this hotel group it was clearly a crucial moment in the brand’s development. We identified the large number of multiple partners operating in different languages and working across a long development time frame that would be involved. It became clear that simplicity not complexity was key.

However, with a simple document, each and every word plays a significant role. (In this case, each word was carrying the burden of $50,000 on its back.)