Hospitality Design Services
Chicago, IL
Brand Strategy
Market Positioning
Messaging & Copywriting
Social Media Strategy & Management
Digital Collateral & Content Design
In hospitality design, The Gettys Group is known for designing luxury hotels, but their high-end renown overshadowed another profitable service: interpreting the interior design brand standards of more affordable hotel franchises. The owners and operators of brands like Holiday Inn and SpringHill Suites perceived them as too expensive to design properties with affordable room rates.
To target this audience, The Gettys Group launched the successful brand Gettys ONE — a one-stop shop that streamlined the design, documentation, and approval process for mid-to-upscale hotels. But after five years, the market for this service had become crowded. To stay competitive, the Gettys ONE brand was overdue for a refresh of its visual identity, strategy, and market amplification.
The brand’s fifth anniversary coincided with a fast-approaching hospitality conference — an opportunity for an attention-grabbing relaunch event. The brand’s overhaul was fast-tracked to be fully complete in a two-month timeframe.
“‘…the team’s extensive brand expertise makes for a faster project ramp-up, allowing for more efficiency with timelines on projects that still require a customized touch,’ said Amanda Kay, senior brand designer.”
We differentiated Gettys ONE from competitors — who fixated on their adherence to brand standards — by highlighting how our team balanced the needs of the brand with a strong sense of place, appealing to guests looking for an authentically local experience; the brand promised Practical Artistry:
Thoroughly defining the foundation of the brand — its promise, tone of voice, and more —ensured that all future brand efforts aligned with this core vision.
The brand had previously been presented as a subset of The Gettys Group’s interior design services. To help it stand on its own as a sister brand, a dedicated landing page at GettysONE.com featured fresh content like a project reel.
As an alternative to printed brochures that need frequent reprinting to stay updated, I developed a tablet- and browser-compatible digital brochure. Engaging animations helped users quickly scan the content, while sticky navigation allowed them to jump directly to the topics that caught their attention. Ditching printed brochures made it simple to keep content always updated with the latest work.
Before launching the revamped brand, we focused on obtaining enthusiastic internal buy-in — ensuring that team members from across the The Gettys Group could comfortably act as brand ambassadors to clients, suppliers, contractors, and potential new teammates.
The internal launch celebration served as a test run of collateral and treats that would support the brand during its public relaunch event — from a photobooth to custom cupcakes.
Branded tote bags contained conference kits — complete with one-sheets, fact cards, treat-filled business card holders, and more.
Cards featuring fun facts about Gettys ONE brought our team and our targets up to speed on the brand while familiarizing them with the new, approachable tone of voice.
Business cards were packed along with a memorable treat…
…custom-M&Ms featuring the brand’s stamp and new URL.
The business card emulated the energy of the animated stamp pattern by highlighting a different “1” on the back of each card.
Mini foam fingers served as fun photo props for the event photobooth before becoming a mainstay of the new Instagram profile.
Sales one-sheets drilled down into the latest facts and figures that mattered most to hotel developers in the market for interior design services.
To expand the kind of assets we could leverage for our newly launched Instagram account, I drew inspiration from business-to-consumer hotel, travel, and tourism accounts.
First, I positioned the team as imaginative experts from a new generation of business travel — road warriors frequently visiting suppliers, hotels in need of renovation, and test rooms that showcased their proposed designs. I wrote team member profiles that highlighted the breadth of their creative drive, then led tutorials in taking great travel photos with just a phone. This approach perfectly suited a team with diverse creative talents and a knack for finding unique points of interest during their travels —helping us highlight the locations of their hotel projects as aspirational travel destinations.
Next, I monitored geolocation tags, official hotel accounts, and brand hashtags to discover user-generated content that showcased the team’s work — including weddings, seasonal cocktails, vacation inspiration, and furry friends. This content breathed life into the spaces designed by our team — transforming them from beautiful still lifes to energized environments.
View this post on Instagram
We personally guarantee the fluffiness of every throw pillow in the lobbies we design. 📷 @rocco_roni
Finally, I developed graphic posts that would make our Instagram feed even more vibrant, and further differentiated from competitors who didn’t leverage any branded graphics. I designed new icons and custom illustrations — sometimes even animating them — to add quotations, holiday posts, and job alerts.
In its first year, the Instagram account’s organic growth rate significantly outperformed the growth of the main Gettys Group Instagram account. This served as a proof that outsourced marketing and PR activities could be more efficiently executed in house — expanding the size and scope of The Gettys Group in-house marketing team.
The flourishing Gettys ONE brand also led to a new era in The Gettys Group — prompting the company to develop new brands for its other distinct hospitality services so that each service could also be targeted to its highly specific audience, and better setup for market success.
