Creating and hacking a lifestyle brand – The QO, Amsterdam.

Some of the lessons and actions that I will be covering today can be lifted and applied in any scale be that big or small. From a stand-alone café that sells amazing coffee to a hotel chain. You could also look at individual outlets within your hotel or shopping centre. You name it this could really work. 

To get yourself into the QO vibes check out its website as that might help it make sense as I discuss it through the paper… equally if that doesn’t make you want to stay I might be in the shit. I’m actually sat in the QO as I write this, watching it come together, very exciting. I hope you fall in love with the brand as much as I do. 

https://www.qo-amsterdam.com

There is quite a caveat here also, and that’s the fact I’m not a university going brander. I’m a guy, with a vision and a huge amount of experience in the boutique / lifestyle sector… sooo before someone writes to be saying I don’t have the right vincula… helpfully the passion and content overrides it (or this could be a load of crap!!) I’m a Changemaker if I had any label, someone who champions, and challenges change in all ways, always. So a quick overview of the common traits of a Changemaker – 

• Have strong leadership qualities and so can create a ‘following’ to get change happening.
• Dislikes hierarchy, unnecessary process and bureaucracy.
• Break down silos and encourage cross-collaboration (against the odds). 
• Incredibly people and customer focused, often making personal sacrifice for the greater good.
• Lacks ego based decisions.

To help give some real context here. 

As you go through this, I have put in bold key lessons / practices that I think you guys will love. 

So two years ago Stephen McCall my COO gave me the opportunity to take the lead on a project in Amsterdam, working with the Owners who already had worked up a very strong building that was based around being environmentally sound and ethical in its approach to sustainability. This was a great base, a shell. 

This is the mock up rooms we started with, which were created before the Boutique team was on board, so we already knew the gap in understanding was massive. It’s good to understand a starting point. Sometimes you realise that it’s also an education piece to the other people on this project. I dont need to spend time explaining whats wrong here...

but from that to this...

Really shows the work we had ahead of us.

The opportunity to help shape and create something from just a building was too good to miss. The goal was a lifestyle business that delivered a very high-end guest experience. Before I start to talk through the process and people I worked with to do this, I think it’s worth talking about what a ‘Lifestyle Hotel’ is. 

How about starting with what Lifestyle is not and that’s old fashion traditional luxury. You would be amazed the amount of times this conversation rears its head in the boutique world. This misunderstanding of ‘Lifestyle’ means we end up with hotels / businesses out there that don’t really fit, that don’t seem to have a home, that kinda drift through their lives never truly fulfilling their potential. All because there was a massive lack of understanding at the start. You need to be really clear about the definition you are going for and then make this your lens, everything you do, you must look through that lens and check it against the ‘Brand idea’.

It prevents silly conversations/comments around things. Let me give you some classic examples I’ve personally faced. Now the main issue around this is that usually the ‘people’ giving you feedback are not the target guest and just have a ‘feeling’ it should be done another way.. you can keep that feeling homie! So here goes - 

-      I don’t like the music in the bar, it’s too clubby(okay thanks) – it’s a roof top bar in the centre of Amsterdam, we got this. 

-      We need to stock diet coke upstairs(cheers then) – we are actually showcasing Dutch produce so using Dutch cola in this bar, but thanks (it’s the brand….have a look at the lens).

-      This looks like someone with tattoos made this decision– er… okay then what does that look like? FFS!!!

-      This isn’t luxury enough– Great thanks, assuming that’s a compliment? (no…?) 

-      I hate the uniforms, they don’t look luxury – Well that’s because their well-designed, on trend, and the team love them. oh and their not polyester.. but thanks that’s valuable feedback, it’s a gift. 

Just some fun (but honestly real examples) Go back to your lens and look through it again. Always refer back to your lens, it’s the great leveller. Don’t allow comments / thoughts / views and opinions of people who ‘Know better’to shape the decisions you make. Stay strong, fight hard, trust the team you have surrounded yourself with and you will deliver excellence. These views tend to be emotional, or off the cuff rather than developed and well thought out. Scarily these can kill the idea and brand before it gets off the ground, actually they can really fuck it up. I’ve seen it so many times. Ego over fact.

Actually even worse than that is Ego over Expertise. 

Let’s think of that another way. 

You and I are building the latest supercar, design is great, its bloody fast, its obviously black (FYI – all cars should be black) and were starting to build it. Then, in chips Ben, now Ben isn’t a specialist in this area but believes that we should have wheels that are from a lorry, because thats what he saw one day, years ago and thinks it looks cool. So the decision we have to make is how are we going to look at the input of Ben. Its easy, we go back to that lens of what we all agreed we wanted the car to be and look through it. This allows us to really check if we should put lorry wheels on a supercar… sorry Ben no lorry wheels today big man! 

So not everyone’s input helps, sometimes it just adds to the noise. It really takes strength of character to not be swayed. Stay true

So lets quickly clear up what ‘Lifestyle’ represents in our industry. ‘Lifestyle Hotels’ are the next generation of full service boutique hotels. Lifestyle hotels evolve with the changing tastes of their travellers, so they need to be en-vogue and relevant. Being nimble is the key trigger for this, so not only in terms of design, offering, service but also the people. 

Managing a business that evolves as it grows is a niche, I’m profoundly lucky with the team we have at the QO, they define this. Lifestyle is also seen to be more upscale than high-street boutique – think of it as a step up from what you have at home. You should walk around these hotels craving the chair you saw and that coffee the team made for you.  

So, working on that philosophy – Hotel Indigo is Boutique. Marriott Edition is Lifestyle. 

Lifestyle isn’t luxury. So often it’s got wrong. I think being honest it becomes an ego game, god what a load of bollocks that is. People want luxury without actually knowing what it is in reality. You see hotel groups and owners trying to run lifestyle hotels with a luxury team and there is a disconnect as the two disciplines are very different. 

So the first big part – Be clear what you are creating, its shaped every decision I made moving forward. 

In the very early days the project team consisted of; Myself, Rene the Head of R&B, Europe and Bryony our Head of Brand (for the QO). The goal was clear, create a small detached group that could make quick, agile decisions to create and shape the brand without the need of a ton of committees, head nodding and paper! Supported by the great European Operations Leadership Team (OLT) Stephen, Peter, Hazel and JC. These guys brought us the ‘white space’ needed to work. As you can imagine this is quite a rare thing in a globally branded organisation. 

After meeting with owners and understanding their view. We went away and started to really think about what we wanted, it was important looking at what we wanted to deliver as much as what we wanted not to deliver. 

Actually, the what we didn’t want to be was so powerful it really helped shape us. 

We linked up with Lori from Plum Brands (amazing!!) 

One of our first real brand missions was looking at the key inputs of 3 main stakeholders 

1.     Us (the Hotel).

2.     The Market place we are about to hack and the competition we want to smash. 

3.     The definition of our guest. Who’s going to stay at this little ripper of a hotel.

We were looking for Relevant Differentiation

·     Something that gets you closer to your target audience (relevance).

·     Moves you further from your competition (differentiation).

About now in this part of the journey I remember Bryony drawing me this massive triangle and it was then I thought – Shit I wish I had done better at trigonometry at school… turns out still didn’t need it. Bryony was teaching me about the above (never too old to learn) See Bryony at least I remember it. 

Part of our challenge was the slightly out of town location. So we actually owned that and decided that part of our brand would be to own the location, be proud of it, champion it, create something that appeals to everyone from your locals who live next to us to those international travellers who are looking to be excited and blown away by experience and comfort. 

Sometimes what starts as a negative just needs to be reframed and owned. Think of the amount of time that as humans we invest into bitching about a problem, when in fact we should change how we look at it and hey presto we become energised and ready for action! 

During this branding time we worked on the – 

-      Brand Experience

-      Logos 

-      Brand beliefs 

-      Reasons to believe. 

The QO is the mother brand, so it needed to be strong. As inside the QO are the brands linked to Restaurants, Bars, Coffee shops and Wellbeing. Before we could get to that we needed to get our shit together on what the QO was (at the time it had the catchy working title of Hotel Amstelkwartier(based on its location).

We landed on these key points (I’m obviously not sharing everything here, I like to keep some secrets).

Brand Experience – the key attribute to how it comes to life. 

·     Alive

·     Human

·     Crafted

·     Unexpected

 From this driver we were keen to build solid brand beliefsand then reasons to believe that I won’t be sharing today!! 

We had created our lens. (yesssssss) 

Sounds exciting right, I have to tell you and be honest. There is a lot of heartbreak in these moments. As you spend session after session refining these words and their context to make sure that they really fit as everything else hangs from it. Big advice, drop the ego it really can screw days like this up if you become precious of an idea or a word, but mostly trust the specialists. Surround yourself with wonderful people who can call you out on your views and ideas if they’re crap. Rather we do that internally than when you are presenting it. 

What’s the lesson to those of you who are already operating a brand?

When was the last time you were looking at your business and actually stopped to recalibrate on what is your mission? We get so wrapped up in the day to day operation, cashflow, problems, firefighting that we actually don’t often stop and take stock of what we are actually there for. Why are these people spending money with us? Are we still relevant? Does the team know what our mission (brand ambition) is? 

The reason this part is so important is because this becomes your lens. So get this bit wrong and the challenges are the rest of it will start to fall to one side to. 

If the lens is distorted, then everything that you create that hangs off it is also distorted. Before you know it, it’s a real shit show. We all see this in businesses when you experience them you don’t get what it’s all about…. They didn’t use their lens, or they listened to input of people that didn’t see the lens and had their own motive, ego, desire. This happens so much in our business. Actually take the emotion out of it (weird for me to say as the most emotional person ever). Get the brand right. Stay true to it. Success will come. 

So now we had our lens. Time to start working with external designers for things such as logo, design, R&B concept development. 

Once we started to work with these guys having given them the brief / lens to work with, it was a waiting game. 

That gave us time to look at People, at this stage don’t forget your lens. 

If you have read any of my other articles, then you will know how important this is. More importantly if you get this wrong it can really screw up the whole project, business, work. It actually creates a rot in the core of your ambition. This is important in any business but while creating a business / brand the leadership team become more critical as they are on the ground setting the tone. 

The QO operates with 2 incredible GM’s Inge and Pieter. Inge is the GM of the Hotel and Pieter is the GM of the Restaurant and Bars. I love these guys, honestly, they are a daily inspiration for me. They are the perfect fit for the business. It took time, maybe a little too long, but waiting for the right match is priceless. 

With the leadership team on board we started to look at 2 of the operationally important factors 

1.     Guest Journey 

2.     Employee Journey. 

We agreed that we would put as much importance on the Employee journey as the Guest journey. All too often the focus is soooooo guest that the most important aspect is forgotten, the team and the people that will bring this brand to life, the soul. 

Working with some really inspiring external business owners who we admired, not from our sector, people like Natasha the owner of Studio191 in Amsterdam, super inspiring!  We designed some of the most ground-breaking service and experience journeys out there. 

One of my mantras over this moment was ‘Lets remove all the barriers you come across in your average hotel, as they are just accepted for being crap’. We don’t have to be. 

So for us that was things like -

1.    Really bad wifi (that’s also impossible to connect to) 

2.    Horrid hot breakfast buffet 

3.    Impersonal interactions from the team

4.    Bedroom safe that doesn’t fit your laptop

5.    Poor bedding and pillows

6.    Overpriced under delivered mini bar 

7.    Toiletries so small you have to pick if you’re washing top half or bottom half.. (sorry made myself laugh there) 

8.    No story, just a cookie cutter box that could be any hotel in any city. 

My goodness the list went on and on, hopefully you see some of your pet hates here. All to often we just accept this crap. If the business is open and trading its considered just part of daily life. The reality is, it doesn’t have to be. Look at it differently, change it, own it and most importantly don’t accept it. 

The acceptance of averageness is the number one killer of creativity, passion and change. 

Now I’m not going to share our guest journey as that’s something you need to come and experience yourself. (see what I did there) all 11 key touch points…

In terms of service tone the big message was to create a service culture that moves away from that subservient culture, even writing that makes my skin crawl. Yes we are in the service industry but we need to evolve. The bowing heads, white gloves, napkin over your arm vibe (I’m being dramatic) has its place I’m sure. Just not with me, not here, not this team. 

We also made sure that we used technology where it added value both in creating more efficiency in the team, allowing them more time to spend with our guests, not to cut costs as would be done in so many places and then also to make the experience easier for our guests giving them more freedom and time. From the in room i-pads to the digital help anywhere service. 

So we have built a service experience based on 

1.     Engaging personal moments 

2.     Informal yet respectful 

3.     Natural 

4.     Kind 

5.     Ambassadors of the city

6.     Localised pride. 

Less SOP’s more Freedom.

Think about this. You want your team to deliver a fluid guest experience, yet we traditionally have built a book of SOP’s around the experience that organically suck’s the soul out of any interaction. I crave a framework that the team understand to give them space to play in. Give them the boundaries and trust them to do the right thing. If that scares you, I think you recruited the wrong people sorry big boy!

When it then came to Employee Journeyit was easy. We wanted team members to bring this guest journey to life, so we needed to treat them well, show them trust and be better than average. 

The time came for us to write this and we built it from your first day. Using the same thought pattern as the guest journey. It included everything from rewards, to staff feeding, facilitates, welfare and wellbeing. Its honestly beautiful. Also not forgetting tying it into the sustainability of our business message. 

The aim of the game was to give our team the confidence to deliver and look after them so much they become our biggest ambassadors. 

When was the last time you actually looked at your employee experience? From day 1 to daily rituals?

So we had our brand, we had started the design process and now kicked off knowing what we wanted to do for our people and more importantly what we expected from them. 

Now you may think okay, sounds pretty easy.. what did you do when all the rest was happening. But when you truly bespoke a brand (and I learnt quick and dirty lessons here) things you don’t first consider are - 

Key cards, badges, paper, envelopes, bill folders, uniforms, umbrellas, water bottles, in room amenities etc. 

When you visit lots of this you won’t notice our big driver was not to seem over designed, but everything to have practical usage and place. 

So take the little waters bottles, they are cute, they look great (you need to get one now) but we teamed up with ‘join the pipe’ https://www.amsterdammade.org/en/makers/join-the-pipe/for every water bottle we bought they provide one to a child in need. That completely unpublished ethics, as we didn’t rave about it when handing them out, was symbolic of the brand. 

Go back to (some of our) Brand beliefs (sneak peek) 

·     Generous of spirit

·     New ways and fresh thinking

So if you then see that even something as simple as a water bottle had this much depth behind it, can you imagine the effort put into the bespoke toiletries or the discussions over the towels (it was shit loads). Every aspect of the QO was tested like this. 

It was around this point that the team started to grow within the brand using the lens and beliefs to build out the brand. 

Just a small, but tangible example. As I mentioned earlier we had also started to consider what the sub brands would be that hang off the QO mother brand. The R&B brands are pure example and testament to a strong lens. 

The team developed 2 main concepts 

Juniper and Kin - https://www.juniperandkin.nl

Persijn - https://www.persijn.nl

These concepts not only complimented the master brand but also took advantage of the unique offering of the building such as a green house on the roof. We were very clear that these outlets must be able to operate and have the mentality of stand-alone restaurants and bars rather than some crap hotel restaurant or lounge bar that we have all seen far too many times. Honestly hotels who still don’t get this right leave so much money on the table it’s scary.  We were determined to make this hotel different, destinations within destinations.

Here is quite the lesson. 

There is obviously so much I could cover from design process to logo creation I will look at expanding these over a series of 4 other articles. 

Leadership in roles like this have to be trust based. You pick the right people, agree the lens and then watch them grow as well as the brand does. In this case the lens becomes those handy inflatable things that pop up when your 10-pin bowling to allow you to always to get a strike. The leaders’ role is to ensure their team always gets that strike when building a brand. Give them trust, show them respect and most of all protect them from all the shit. The disbelievers, the haters. 

One of the greatest things about leading an evolution and creation like this is seeing it come to life…. I couldn’t be prouder of all that’s been done. Voted as one of the Coolest Global Hotel openings in 2018, is a job well done.

I hope you fall in love as much as I have. 

Life’s too short for ordinary. 

As always I love to hear you comments please lets have a chat. Also if you loved it please share it it really helps!!

Paul

Creative Director and Founder

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