Skinn Branding Agency

Brand hospitality
& franchise

Insights
25-04-2023
25-04-2023

How to create a place that offers a consistent brand experience?

A consistent brand experience strengthens the brand, creating different mental paths for memory and bonding. That's why it's important for brand values to shine through every outlet, including spatial design and service. How do you create those ‘safe spaces’ that will immediately speak to the mind of the consumer? From hospitality to retail to any franchised activity, strategic thinking and a holistic approach are your designated tools.

Mental
availability

How did Starbucks take over the world of coffee? How did Mc Donald’s become the reference for every fast-food chain? More than the intrinsic quality of their products, it’s the consistent brand identity and the carefully defined ritual of every consumer’s journey that carry the strength of those brands. Not only does everybody know exactly what to expect when pushing the door of one of their venues, anywhere around the globe, but both companies have also become references in their fields, even for people who are not their clients.

These positions of strength create what Byron Sharp, Professor of Marketing Science at the University of South Australia, calls ‘mental availability’. An operative concept developed in his 2010 reference book ‘How Brands Grow’ and widely adopted since by marketeers around the world. Mental availability encompasses the shortcuts that help consumers to choose brands, in that it refers to the probability that a buyer will notice, recognize and/or think of a brand in buying situations. It should of course not be confused with a mere visual identity. Reaching mental availability can only be achieved through a global approach.

Strategy
at the core

Companies often tend to focus on sales goals – because they are tangible and measurable in a shorter run – rather than on targeting mental availability. Focusing on strengthening the brand culture and letting it shine through can nevertheless generate much more value in the long-term game. To achieve a consistency that contributes to a 360, bulletproof brand experience, you will need to embrace a holistic model, and to involve different profiles of strategic and design experts who will contribute to that final, seamless effect. This branding process follows a three-layers pattern: strategy, identity, experience.

It all begins with the core, the definition of who you are: your promise, your values, your mission, your personality, your vision… Those ‘stories’, aggregated and consolidated in a clear strategy, will form the creative matrix leading to your identity – an integrated system expressed through spatial, visual, sonic and verbal modes. Finally, your strategic core and identity will translate into interaction touchpoints with your customers – from physical spaces, to websites, to printed materials or merchandising etc – creating the actual brand experience. To sum it up, the more integrated the process is, the stronger the experience will be. By creating enough push from the core, one multiplies the possible connections with the buyers, strengthening brand awareness and offering even more space for mental availability.

Another idea
of hospitality

This theoretical model finds very concrete applications in the hospitality sector. Nowadays, a restaurant experience goes way beyond the perfection of the food and drinks, and a hotel experience is much more than comfortable rooms and fresh towels. It is not even about the excellence of service but about consistency, at every level, from the moment of the booking to the check-out. Amenities, entertainment, communal spaces, personalization, all those elements have become part of the customer’s expectation and need to be thought of and designed as an organic intricate ecosystem.
SKINN UPSTAIRS Branding Logo Design 1 | SKINN BRANDING AGENCY
SKINN UPSTAIRS Branding Logo Design 2 | SKINN BRANDING AGENCY
The complete transformation of Ostend’s former Royal Astor Hotel into the new trendy New York inspired boutique Upstairs Hotel offers a perfect example of how those principles can be set in action. Following a strict strategic and design process, SKINN rewrote a completely new story in phase with the new concept, permeating every square meter of the hotel.
SKINN UPSTAIRS Photography Fotografie Interior Interieur | SKINN BRANDING AGENCY
SKINN UPSTAIRS Branding Gadget Merchandising 1 | SKINN BRANDING AGENCY
SKINN UPSTAIRS Photography Fotografie Visual Storytelling 1 | SKINN BRANDING AGENCY

"Architecture, interior, furnishing, materials, style: the complete brand experience and spatial identity have been reinvented."

Matty Bossouw, Creative Director at SKINN
SKINN UPSTAIRS Photography Fotografie Visual Storytelling 2 | SKINN BRANDING AGENCY

"A brand with a clear concept behind it makes for a strong experience. You start with a feeling, the kind of emotion you want to evoke in people who visit the place, and you keep building it out, all the way to the smallest details."

FULL CASE →
SKINN UPSTAIRS Branding 1 | SKINN BRANDING AGENCY
SKINN UPSTAIRS Branding 2 | SKINN BRANDING AGENCY

Franchising
excellence

Because they empower recognizability and facilitate the implementation of repetitive scenarios, holistic strategic designs can also greatly benefit franchise concepts. Following the three-layered core-to-experience approach will allow the establishment of clear brand guidelines and consequently lead to the achievement of real brand consistency. This is, of course, also true outside the hospitality business.
SKINN IMMOFRANCOIS PREVIEW | SKINN BRANDING AGENCY
For the growing real-estate company Immo François and its 29 offices across Belgium, SKINN set up a brand system that forms a solid foundation for the franchise, starting with distinctive and recognizable visual elements easily noticed both online and offline, but also a complete brand behaviour routine, namely the service and mindset, that makes the experience with Immo François consistent across all offices. When clients see the green logo, they immediately know what to expect: an energetic, highly professional and modern real estate office that has set new communication standards within its own industry.
SKINN IMMOFRANCOIS Signage Signalisatie Photography Fotografie 1 | SKINN BRANDING AGENCY
SKINN IMMOFRANCOIS Signage Signalisatie Photography Fotografie 2 | SKINN BRANDING AGENCY

When clients see the green logo, they immediately know what to expect: an energetic, highly professional and modern real estate office that has set new communication standards within its own industry.

FULL CASE →
SKINN IMMOFRANCOIS Photography Fotografie Visual Storytelling | SKINN BRANDING AGENCY
SKINN IMMOFRANCOIS Signage Bord | SKINN BRANDING AGENCY
When it comes to franchise, it is also essential to create values and principles that define the final experience in a simple and understandable way. Every employee, on any level, should be able to carry that experience, to share the vision and to bring it to life. Brand training and ongoing monitoring will of course be essential to maintain the consistency of the storytelling, but they must be seen as a result of a clear core strategy.

The importance of image and reputation management – based on the initial branding frame – is of the essence. Coming back to Starbucks, it is not the visual identity or the interior decoration that made the brand successful, it’s the emotion, the shared romantic ideal and the complete ritual of the coffee: the smell perceived from outside, the ordering moment with the first-name basis, the wait for the cup – and in the end, a simple latte becoming a real object of desire.

Strengthening your brand
through time… and space.

Fluid consistency is the holy grail of branding. Especially when it comes to hospitality or franchised activities. Reaching that goal can only be achieved through a strategic approach that goes way beyond a mere visual identity. SKINN makes you discover the virtues of a holistic brand strategy and reveals the process that will lead to consistent experience and service. Welcome to a world of mental availability and pertinent brand awareness!
Insights yves | SKINN BRANDING AGENCY
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