Brand Focused Hiring

By:  Bobby Baker, VICE PRESIDENT OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, Corvirtus, BLLA Supplier Member

In order for a brand to come alive in the eyes of customers, two primary factors come into play when it comes to hiring: 1) employees working in the business must be able to competently perform within their functional roles, and 2) the roles employees fill must be crafted to deliver the intended brand. Most businesses concentrate predominately on the first factor; that is, most businesses ensure that their employees can perform their jobs competently. Unfortunately, far fewer businesses understand that such functional competence, by itself, is simply not enough to create a truly memorable and resonating experience with customers.

Employees (and managers) must be both competent and brand-focused. Of course, it is up to the leaders in the business to establish a brand-focused culture and to create overt processes and procedures supportive of the brand. All too often, an essential procedure that is neglected when it comes to this leadership responsibility is hiring. Most businesses are simply not brand-focused when they hire new employees and managers. Predominantly, businesses focus solely on functional job performance. This is especially true when it comes to the use of hiring tools, particularly assessments. In fact, the majority of hiring assessments found in place today are based on overt knowledge, skills, abilities and personal characteristics intended to predict a job candidate’s potential for functional job performance success.

Functional competence, on the part of a business’s employees and managers, is absolutely critical to long-term success. However, a quarter of a century worth of applied experience partnering with successful brand-focused companies has taught us that functional competence is not the only factor critical to success, especially when it comes to authentic brand delivery. A business actually hires its customer’s experience when it hires the people who deliver it. Employee attributes and behaviors should always be considered within the context of the business’s intended brand. More specifically, a business’s hiring processes should include assessing job candidates for their brand delivery potential on top of functional competence. Employees need to be engaged, positive and receptive while managers need to be direct, open and caring. Many, if not most businesses fall short in hiring these types of people (which is almost immediately recognized by customers).

Creating a remarkable customer experience is how today’s best-in-class companies differentiate themselves from their competition. In order to create such remarkable customer experiences, businesses must start by hiring the right people to deliver them.

 

CLEAN SLATE BRANDS

I discovered this great article on this subject matter at trendsetting.com and absolutely believe it applies to the boutique and lifestyle sector of hospitality.

We’d love to hear from you and who your vote would be who represents CLEAN SLATE BRANDS in our sector of the industry!  21C Museum Hotels, SLS and Virgin come to mind. 

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There’s a profound shift in power taking place in the business arena. With a whole new breed of exceptional new brands living by the rules of Business 3.0, consumers are now attracted to unproven and unknown brands the way they were attracted to established brands in the past. In fact, ‘established’ is now often just another word for tired if not tainted. The future belongs to CLEAN SLATE BRANDS.

CLEAN SLATE BRANDS:   Newer, better, faster, cleaner, more open and responsive; consumers are rushing to CLEAN SLATE BRANDS and are now  lavishing love, attention and trust on brands without heritage and history.

LUST FOR THE NEW

Why for consumers, ‘new’ now truly means ‘better’

The consumer arena has never been more fixated on the ‘new’. Thanks to the democratization and globalization of innovation (not to mention the celebration of entrepreneurship), brands and individuals from all corners of the world are now working around the clock to dream up and launch endless new products and services, that are truly better and more exciting than current offerings. Lower barriers to entry has gone from buzzphrase to reality, especially online.

And to underscore the ‘for and by’ element of the democratization of innovation, new players are by default more nimble and laser-focused on what consumers want now (as opposed to yesterday) than the bigger legacy-laden brands they compete with.

So from being something that was pushed to consumers by businesses (‘new and improved’), the ‘new’ is now subject to an increasingly strong pull from consumers. Excited by positive experiences of a ‘new’ that is genuinely ‘better’, consumers are hungry for more.

INSTANT TRUST

Why consumers are immediately comfortable with, even prefer, turning to CLEAN SLATE BRANDS

The whole concept of ‘brands’ rests on the idea that consumers need recognizable, trusted symbols, honed over many years, to help them navigate the wealth of available choices. However this idea is being swept aside in a business arena* now characterized by INSTANT TRUST.

* This trend is most relevant in mature economies, where trust in big business has never been lower: only 28% trust big business in the UK, 30% in Japan, 32% in Australia, 33% in the US and 34% in Canada. In emerging markets however, consumers’ trust levels are much higher: 83% in China, 72% in Turkey, 65% in Brazil and India (Havas, January 2013). The question is: will big business maintain this trust?

Four forces are making consumers immediately comfortable with (and even prefer) turning to CLEAN SLATE BRANDS:

IMMEDIATELY KNOWN:

Now that experiences are increasingly shared, and even the newest of the new is instantly reviewed and rated, consumers have THE F-FACTOR, and feel more confident in being earlier and earlier adopters.

92% trust recommendations from friends and family above all other forms of advertising, up 18% since 2007. Online consumer reviews are the second most trusted source of brand information with a 70% trust rating, up 15% since 2008. Television ads were trusted by only 47%, down 24% since 2009.
(Nielsen, April 2012)

BORN CLEAN:

CLEAN SLATE BRANDS better reflect the zeitgeist. The fact that they are (by definition) newly established, means that they often have ‘new’ business values – such as higher environmental, ethical and social standards – deeply baked into their business models and practices. Just witness how the values of local, storied, sustainable, progressive new businesses have been consistently appropriated by big businesses, as they stumble to catch up here.

The average age of brands in Millward Brown’s BrandZ Top 100 Global Brands Report has fallen consistently, from 84 in 2006 to 68 in 2012. 
(Millward Brown, May 2012)

SIMPLE TRUTH:

CLEAN SLATE BRANDS’ simple, lean operations (everything from fair labor practices, transparent supply chains and clean design) are easily understandable – and therefore trusted – by consumers. And with scandal after scandal (from financial products to horsemeat) being blamed on excess ‘complexity’, who can blame them?

Brands that simplify customer decision-making are 115% more likely to be recommended.      (Corporate Executive Board, May 2012)

FUTURE FAITH:

Business practices are now totally transparent (and if not, merely waiting to be exposed). CLEAN SLATE BRANDS know this. Consumers know that CLEAN SLATE BRANDS know this. Which explains why, on top of the fact that CLEAN SLATE BRANDS, almost by definition, cannot have sinned yet (they’ve just started, after all), consumers trust them to act correctly in the future too.

64% of global consumers think most companies are trying to be responsible only to improve their image.   (Havas Media, 2011)     

Or, to put it another way, many ‘old’ brands were set up in the era of industrial capitalism, when secrecy was a source of competitive advantage and shareholders encouraged pursuit of profit at any cost. Now the world has changed, but even older brands that want to reposition themselves have a hard time wrestling with internal fiefdoms, convoluted legacy systems and opaque supply chains (something that many big company readers of our Trend Briefings might have first hand experience of .

OPEN OPERATION

Why using or buying from CLEAN SLATE BRANDS feels more meaningful

CLEAN SLATE BRANDS are natives in a land where communication with brands is two-way, participatory and less reverential, and as such can connect with consumers in a way that older brands often struggle to.

Whether it’s through offering financial support, by helping to shape a brand’s operations, or even by contributing to the product itself (see the Lockitron, Coffee Joulies and Waze examples below), customers of CLEAN SLATE BRANDS often feel more in control – a basic human desire – and that they have a meaningful relationship with the brand*.

* Yes, we too hate the idea that all consumers want to ‘have a relationship’ with any brand they buy from There are many purchases that are, and will remain, purely functional. But even in traditionally ‘low involvement’ categories such as domestic care, CLEAN SLATE BRANDS with strong stories and identities can thrive. Witness for example how Method’s design-led, eco-friendly products succeeded against P&G’s and Unilever’s.

Don’t forget to tell us your vote for who you think the CLEAN SLATE BRANDS in boutique or lifestyle or luxury hospitality are. 

Traveling Boutique style – in mind & spirit – not the same as just plain traveling

By:  Frances Kiradjian, Founder, The Boutique & Lifestyle Lodging Association (BLLA)

This month I had the pleasure of traveling to Europe (Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam) for the International Hotel Investment Conference, the ITB Exhibition as well as the Hunter Hotel Conference in Atlanta.

Charming Amsterdam

On my flight home, I was thinking about how the thrill of travel (as well as the anxiety) was omnipresent and has never really changed that much, at least as far as my own personal experience.

Through the trial and tribulations of planning complex itineraries, booking planes, trains, automobiles, hotels and conference registration, making it to and from airports and lodging and through security with different experiences country by country from lifting your arms as they take an image and body scan through giving up my almond milk while the exact same box in my daughter’s bag made it through security.

Princess Diana memorial looking over to the Eiffel Tower

The real thrill is in connecting with people and cultures in hotels, in trains and buses and planes and who are attending or exhibiting at these conferences.  It’s simply a marvelous experience and I can’t help but love just about every single person I come in contact with.  Whether it’s the bellman at the front door of the hotel (I have learned to highly respect ALL hotel staff and treat them like pros), the TSA staff at the airport checking your identification, the Passport Control officers (although some are pretty cranky but if you smile, look good and are friendly, you can make it through and not have the various Dutch tulip bulbs you forgot about in your suitcase confiscated, although the sniffing dog may just find that banana you took with you from the European breakfast buffet just in case the airplane food was no good, in which case you’re screwed as you will have to have all your bags checked).

One of the best museums in Amsterdam.

Additionally, I simply love connecting with people on-board airplanes.  From a couple flying back from Sydney and across America through Los Angeles to make it home, to a Delta staff trainer sitting next to me to a complete family of 10 kids / grandparents / siblings flying to Los Angeles on vacation from Venezuela.  I connected with every kid (you couldn’t help it as they were all over the place bumping into you, knocking over things and being disruptive) … but seriously, in a nice way if you can imagine that.  They were just a lovely family to watch and I can just imagine how much fun they’re going to have from San Diego to San Francisco as they create lifelong memories for all of them.  I was touched by the 7 year old boy who spoke quite good English.  I taught him to take pictures of his experience along the way, including the beautiful snow-covered mountains out the airplane window and he said with a big smile, “Thank you for giving me this idea of taking pictures so I can remember every single day of my vacation!”

Best Sushi ever at the Sir Albert Boutique Hotel Amsterdam

Staying in boutiques all along the way (I wouldn’t dream of anything else), you cannot help but love the experience of unique stays staffed with friendly, helpful people who can’t do enough for you.  We were only in Amsterdam for 2 days so running around the city left us little time to make plans for dinner.  When we returned to our hotel, the Sir Albert, we were exhausted and it was very late.  The fantastic hotel restaurant was full with no seating available (I did not heed the advice of the staff in the morning who suggested I make a reservation).  So I went to the hostess and begged her to see what she could do.  She consulted with the restaurant manager and he came to the lobby to speak with us.  “For you, madame, we will serve you here in the lobby.  Please tell me what you don’t like and I will create something very special for you.”  Ginger, as HE was called, created the best sushi platter I have ever had in my life and my daughter and I were in heaven, enjoying every single bite.  This is what you can expect from boutique & lifestyle properties … REAL boutique & lifestyle hotels that is!

The people and the places around the world are what inspire and touch me on a deep level to work tirelessly for our wonderful Boutique & Lifestyle Lodging Association members.

New terminal at Charles de Gaulle Airport Paris

So that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Travelling “socially”

The impact of Social Media on the travel industry

With the influx of new apps, platforms & services being released daily, even luxury travel couldn’t outrun the reach of social media. It seems as if travel plans are now almost completely reliant on social channels. Travelers find inspiration on Pinterest, track down deals on Twitter, browse popular hotels on Facebook, and get dining tips on Foursquare. Social media has quickly become the go-to travel agent.

Mobile Me
Boosting social media’s prominence in travel is the fact you can easily access sites through mobile apps. When traveling, it’s imperative to have a mobile device, meaning everything you need to check-in, eat and book is right at your fingertips. For example, on your way into town, you can simply pull out your phone and browse on Foursquare where friends have had dinner. Filled with thousands of listings, pictures and reviews, this app provides you with an idea about a restaurant, lounge, coffee shop without having ever visited. The app Foodspotting is similar, as you can post a picture of a dish after checking-in. Craving shrimp scampi? Browse the app for appetizing matches in the area. Gauging the general consensus regarding a particular place can save you from bad service, overpaying and an unflattering meal.

Share, Ask, Comment
The biggest advantage of using social media while traveling is word-of-mouth. Suggestions and tips from friends is one of the best sources of travel guidance, and can be attained instantaneously. Either by posting a question, or inquiring directly, social media allows you to receive true feedback from friends who’ve had similar experiences. In addition to asking questions, browsing reviews and sentiment of certain properties/eateries is easily accessed on social platforms.

Can You Help Me?
Business are catching on and riding the social media wave as well. Nearly every restaurant, hotel and airline has a Facebook and Twitter profile. By following/becoming friends with company pages you can learn about news, special offerings and events. You can also engage and interact with them directly. For instance, if you’re unfamiliar with the area, simply tweet the hotel using their Twitter handle. In most cases, they will respond right away with suggestions. This is also a great way to mediate personal complaints, as these platforms are transparent, and quality customer service is paramount.

Social media is ever-present in this tech-savvy generation, and the travel industry is diligently following suit. On your next trip, don’t ignore the flurry of check-ins, tweets and comments, as they are extremely helpful during your expeditions through uncharted waters