Up to the Light has over 15 years’ experience working with hospitality brands, both large groups and sole operators, to define and communicate what makes them special. The challenge is not to be underestimated. Hospitality branding is awash with superlatives and similar approaches. To truly define and express your difference takes an understanding of market context and an appreciation of what are potential differentiators versus mere market generic motivators.
If you’ve fully captured your brand - your proposition, essence, positioning, values, personality, and tone of voice - and successfully communicated your brand’s distinctiveness, then we celebrate your success. But if you feel your brand lacks a defining essence and a distinctive positioning, or these things need developing or refining in response to changing times, we have the skills set and experience to help.
We do this by fully understanding factors like your:
- Aspirations
- Core proposition
- Heritage
- Hospitality philosophy
- Service ethos
- Tangibles and intangibles
- Defining and distinctive features
- Brand touchpoint
- Target markets
- Customer journeys
- Market sector
- Competitive set
- Routes to market
- Anything and everything that will enable us to get under your skin, derive insights and build your brand strategy
And the results of our work could be one, or any combination, of these things:
- A distinctive and memorable brand strategy
- An engaging brand story
- A defined tone of voice
- A set of core messages
- A marketing strategy
- A contents strategy
- A mapped customer journey and touchpoint strategy
- A set of creative recommendations for your brand expression
Some examples of our collective past experience:
Brand strategy for a Scottish luxury hotel and resort: Brand definition project with a particular emphasis on the four pillars, values and personality traits that define the brand and communicate the hotel and resort’s specific offer and hospitality ethos.
Brand book for an exclusive let tropical island: Development of an emotive, entrancing and visually powerful brand book capturing the essence of the tropical island - its tangible and intangible aspects and what they offer potential guests.
Individual brand strategies for a portfolio of exclusive wedding venues: Creation of individual brand strategies for a collection of wedding venues, the resulting brand guidelines helping inform brand communications and inspiring each venue’s team to tell a consistent story and offer a memorable experience.
Developed brand guidelines and visual identity standards for a luxury apartment rental group: Exercise to research and define this apartment rental group’s brand and bring consistency to its brand identity across numerous London-based properties and multiple brand touchpoints.
Marketing strategy for a historic venue targeting the wedding, private party and business conference markets: Development of a marketing strategy to support the promotion of an historic venue which had just undergone a £500,000 refurbishment and wanted to increase the revenue potential from its three core markets.
Proposition development for a Spanish hill-top resort: Creation of a series of different propositions and supporting stimulus to assist the owners and management team in assessing how to create a more differentiated and ‘magnetic’ offer.
Brand story and members’ handbook for a private sports club: In-depth exploration of the club’s history, offer and defining sporting ethos and the development of a brand promise - ‘Proper golf’ - to engage current and potential members.
Cliveden House
Chewton Glen
The Lygon Arms
11 Cadogan Gardens
The Mayfair Townhouse
Gleneagles Hotel
Jonathan Kirk
Jonathan Kirk is the founder of Up to the Light, a consultancy that provides brand positioning and strategy for clients. The consultancy excels at embracing complexity and holding a brand or business ‘up to the light’ for objective examination. Deep understanding brings clarity, followed by the strategic leaps that can set a brand apart.
Jonathan’s 30-year career has included senior positions as a Director of agencies within both the global WPP and Havas networks. Before founding Up to the Light, he was a Director of Fitch, the global branding group (now Landor). He is a regular trade press contributor and conference speaker, delivering speeches, workshops and seminars for organisations including the Design Business Association, British Institute of Interior Design, Agency Hackers, the Institute of Advertising Practitioners in Ireland (IAPI), Design Skillnet (Ireland) and HURA (The Croatian Association of Communications Agencies). He is a founder member of the DBA’s Experts Register.
Over the course of his career Jonathan has provided senior strategic input for brands including BMW, Hackett, Iconic Luxury Hotels, Aspria, Englefield Estate, Vodafone, The Gleneagles Hotel, Hamptons Estate Agents and VisitBritain.
Giles Calver
The first five years of Giles’ career were spent in advertising at Ogilvy & Mather Direct, DMB&B Direct and Pearson Paul Haworth Nolan. Working as a ‘suit’ he progressed from Account Manager to Account Director working on accounts like Champneys, The English Tourist Board, Nature’s Best, Oxfam, Peugeot Talbot, Reader’s Digest (yes, those ads selling music collections of the decades!) and Royal Viking Line.
In 1990 Giles joined forces with Harry Pearce and Domenic Lippa to co-found Lippa Pearce Design. Together they built a multi-disciplinary agency with an enviable client roster which included Babyliss, GE Information Services, Halfords, Eversheds, Linklaters, The Boots Company, The Co-Op and The Nichols Group.
In 2010 Giles joined Sedley Place as its Planning Director, having spent the previous four years working as a freelance branding and marketing consultant alongside both clients and agencies. During the four years as a consultant he also joined the Design Council’s Designing Demand programme, working as one of its Design Associates, helping businesses embrace design and understand its impact. During his 14 years at Sedley Place Giles headed up its Branding & Graphics Team and was responsible for working with its clients on their branding and marketing strategies in Egypt, France, India, Lithuania, Spain, Switzerland, the Far East and the UK.
Giles is the author of several design-related books and has contributed articles to brand and design publications.
If you’d like to know more, or would like to arrange a meeting, please contact Jonathan Kirk on 07717 852699 or at jonathankirk@uptothelight.co.uk.
We’d love to share more of what we do and how we could help your brand.