Brand Eva-lution

Team Hotelier India , June 1st, 2009

In her three years with Starwood, branding guru Eva Ziegler has completely transformed the face of Le Méridien. With W Hotels now also under her wing, Ziegler shares her expertise in creating the emotional connection with a guest beyond reason and price

Eva Ziegler is the sort of wonder woman that one senses absorbs everything around her, constantly juggles three tasks at once, and most likely dreams up quirky hotel concepts in her sleep — when she has time for it.

Ziegler, Starwood Hotels & Resorts global brand leader for W and Le Méridien, was in Dubai recently for the launch of the first in-hotel L’atelier des Chefs at Le Méridien Dubai.

This cooking school-cum-restaurant, where guests must prepare their own food if they want to eat, is one of Ziegler’s latest additions to the Le Méridien chain, and one she is passionately excited about.

Along with the recent introduction of the LM100 — a community of creative experts and cultural innovators selected by Le Méridien’s cultural curator Jerome Sans and designed to guide the hotels into creative hubs — L’atelier des Chefs is part of the final phase of Ziegler’s mission to transform Le Méridien into a lifestyle brand for Starwood.

This was no small challenge — Le Méridien had a 35-year history as a standalone chain with its roots in France before it was acquired by Starwood in November 2005.

Ziegler joined the company early in 2006, following a varied background branding soft drinks, consumer goods and cars, and has been working since, round-the clock one can only assume, to relaunch the brand according to the Starwood philosophy — that of transforming the hotel business from a transaction-oriented business to a lifestyle branding experience.

From a product perspective, explains Ziegler, Starwood consolidated the brand and 40 hotels left the group, leaving it with 95 to develop.

“You can really class the achievements [with Le Méridien] into three distinct years with three distinct phases,” says Ziegler.

“The first year, 2006, was all about integrating Le Méridien into the Starwood processes and systems. In parallel, we started to develop the fundamentals of the brand — what are the core values, what is the target audience, what is the positioning, what is the visual identity, what are the naming conventions; all the strategic basics of a brand were identified in 2006. In 2007, it was identifying the experiences that we wanted to brand, developing that world that we wanted to create and piloting the experiences that we wanted to start with, because before we roll out anything globally you pilot them in different parts of the world,” continues Ziegler.

She explains that Le Méridien has three focus areas that were critical to the rebranding —arrival, in-room and cuisine— and also three core values, which Ziegler sums up as  “chic, culture, discovery that feels sophisticated, original and contemporary”.

For example, at Le Méridien the arrival experience has four components, all piloted in 2006, which are: the transitional portal achieved through the use of an art appliqué on the door; a sensorial atmosphere of a specific scent, sound and light on entering a Le Méridien; the “unlock art experience”, whereby each key is designed to “be a piece of art that unlocks a cultural institution locally”; and the “elevated experience”, which involves a “24-hour soundscape” playing in the lifts.

It was details as fine as these that were then rolled out in 2008, the first year of global implementation.

Ziegler says: “This year we are still continuing the rollout, and basically out of those three areas of arrival experience, in-room and cuisine, arrival was implemented by the end of March globally; cuisine, in terms of the breakfast, the Coffee Culture and hopefully a second L’atelier des Chefs, should be done by the end of this year; and then in terms of in-room we have developed a bed, towels, bathroom amenities — everything that touches the body.

“That is the longest to roll out because a bed is a big capital investment and the requirement is that anybody that has a bed that is older than five years has to change it. We should have a high level compliance by beginning 2011,” says Ziegler.

As well as rebranding  the three key areas, Le Méridien has implemented a new hotel communications programme, a redefined website, new uniforms called the LM Collection and trained around 100,000 staff in the new service culture, which Ziegler says “was absolutely critical”.

And of course, now Ziegler is at the fun part of focusing on the needs of the “creative guests” that the brand wants to attract.

“We have actually set to offer culture in a new perspective that feels sophisticated and original,” says Ziegler, hence the appointment of Jerome Sans earlier this year.

“The role of cultural curator is completely new; the first ever one in a hotel,” she says.

“Lots of people claim to be art hotels but Le Méridien is a lot more than an art hotel because we want to make culture accessible to the people and when we present art then it’s always in a new way and a new perspective,” says Ziegler.

“Jerome’s  role is to identify artists that we would use for the portal artworks on the doors, the artists with whom we do the key card artworks, identifying the right partners like  L’atelier des Chefs in terms of the cuisine experience, which is all about engaging in the creative processes and learning something new,” she says.

It seems that going forward, therefore, guests will start to really benefit from the three-year rebranding programme, noticing the extra services offered in the realm of art and cuisine, which Ziegler hopes will “differentiate Le Méridien”.

“The transformation has started, the real stuff is in the hotels and we will just need another two years to showcase it throughout arrival, in-room and cuisine in a holistic manner — but it has started and we are very excited,” says Ziegler.

“The performance that this integration pushed for the brand was tremendous over the last three years and it really shows the power of Starwood and its centralised service systems that lay now a platform from which to operate more effectively and efficiently, on which you can then build a brand upon in a very confident way.

“This brand is going to be really beautiful,” she concludes.

“Le Méridien had a lot of cache before, but it’s like a wrought iron — it was dusty and we shaped it now and brushed it and it will shine pretty soon.”        

THE W STORY

Following her success at the helm of Le Méridien’s repositioning, Ziegler has added global brand leader of W Hotels to her role at Starwood.

“The W story is completely different to Le Méridien,” she says. “The character and personality of the two brands is very different, the starting point is very different; W is a brand that was created from scratch by Starwood in 1998 in New York.”

Ziegler explains that W was launched as the “category buster”, to transform the meaning of hotel and the meaning of luxury, making it “the leading lifestyle brand at the time of launch”.

“We want to provide an insider access to a world of wow,” she says.

It is fair to say that the brand has achieved this, with service branded under the idea of ‘whatever, whenever’ and even an in-hotel language, but the next challenge is to transform W from a “US-centric phenomenon to a truly global powerhouse”, says Ziegler.

“We have 27 hotels and by end 2011 we will have 60 plus hotels open in locations like London, Paris, Milan, Barcelona, Dubai, Amman, Shanghai and St Petersburg and also retreats like Ko Samui,” she says.

Of the brand’s launch in the Middle East in Doha in March, Ziegler comments: “For me the effect is almost the same that W had in New York in 1998, which is a total revolution of the scene”.