The current economic climate brings out the best, and worst, in marketing practices. A bold approach was taken by The Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles, where the management team decided to give away 200 complimentary stays over weekends in March and April. With a night averaging $250 and the hotel being associated with one of the largest hospitality brands in the world, Starwood, this counts as quite a big step which most traditional marketers and hoteliers would have immediately strayed away from. What Bonaventure understands is brand value. Their business is down 20%. The hotel most likely feels empty, even on weekends. Of course this marketing stint will bring in 400 guests who will be exposed to the brand and spend money on the property’s bars and restaurants, but more importantly thousands will try to score that free night, thousands will read about the promotion, and at the end of the low-cost, yet highly viral, campaign tens of thousands will be reminded of the fact that there is a forward thinking hotel in downtown L.A.. Maybe to keep in mind when relatives come to town, or for an in-town (=economic) weekend get-away, or to just check out and grab a drink at the bar, either way the brand is on your mind. The recession has all of us rethinking traditional approaches to brand marketing, and many more great ideas will be born. And we will see lots of in-your-face, nearly pathetic, approaches of small businesses trying to hang on to that one more sale that will drive them into the ground and make the ones who understand brand-strategic thinking stand out.

Geyrhalter Design’ed web site and brand for Audiolife received a nice treatment on ‘Attack of the show’. Check it out on G4. 

Happy birthday dear Brand Atmospheres™ Blog! Exactly one year ago you were born. Since then you received 80 posts and even a Trademark symbol to call your very own. As a gift I will promise you to write posts more regularly to keep you edutained. I will also let you into more strategic thoughts about Geyrhalter Design and our exciting clients, because sharing is caring as they say. I hope you will continue to receive as much traffic as you have in this past year. Stay as you are! Happy Birthday!

Too bad that Pantone’s idea of spreading their color-love from shoes to t-shirts, again, in a lengthy co-branding spree is not one of the bright ideas we are getting excited about, even if The New York Times declares it as such. We have seen colored T-Shirts before, actually a whole lot of them at ailing American Apparel recently, and we have even seen colored sneekers, yes we have. Now why exactly would even I as a designer get excited about merchandise in a ‘Pantone’ color, especially via quality unconscious retailer Gap, I really do not know. There must be some smart strategy peeps over at Pantone capable of coming up with other ideas on how such a great brand can be leveraged in more thoughtful ways then just applying it to apparel.

Photo from The New York Times.

…and only to review Interbrand’s report of the Top 100 Global Brands of 2008, then we about had it with looking back. Happy New Year everyone!

could it be that no one at The New York Times realized that the type behind his featured image in today’s paper actually reads ‘ouch’? An example of what happens when the time spend paying attention to details gets cut…Ouch!

A little sarcasm never hurt anyone, especially when times are rough…

Original source unknown, but thanks to Dany for the heads-up.

Less is more. Now even for McDonald’s. At least at the ‘Quarter Pounder’, a concept restaurant in Japan, where the menu’s simplicity, seen below, is reminiscent of In’n'Out, and the graphic design a near-direct copy of Mini, but a fantastic store design and great marketing idea.

Thanks to past GD-Intern Marco for the heads-up. More images and thoughts can be found here.

After my Pepsi re-branding fiasco post, the new Holiday Inn mark follows suite. I just don’t believe a hotel brand should feel like an inexpensive shampoo label or days-marked-off-a-prison-cell-wall (at least it was only a three day stay). Scary to think there surely was a big brand strategy, hundreds of thousands of dollars and a significant brand bible behind this re-branding effort…

Our President-Elect continues to cater to a new generation by launching an official web site to have the country participate in the change to come. Where should we start in saluting the fact that the campaign is over, yet Obama’s team understands that the 2.0 campaign will be best leveraged right this moment to not lose any viral capabilities of the 3+ Million ’subscribers’. The fact that the site gets Geyrhalter Design’s approval and praise for the UI as well as design aesthetics, is, of course, just an added benefit.

While the new administration starts doing, we start watching (in awe) how this historical campaign continues to do the right thing at the right moment.

We will also try to not make this an Obamarama blog, because that is one thing the world does not fall short of at this point in time…