Truly Deeply/Madly

100% Barcelona
Recently I spent a week in Barcelona attend­ing a learn­ing uni­ver­sity with a few hun­dred of the worlds most excit­ing entre­pre­neurs. The event was held at a spec­tac­u­lar, but typ­i­cal business-style hotel in the Port Dis­trict. The day the event fin­ished, I switched hotels as I was keen to immerse myself in a richer vein of the Barcelona expe­ri­ence. And where bet­ter to stay in order to do that than Casa Camper.

I have to admit from the out­set that I’m a bran­da­holic. I’m addicted to brands with soul, authen­tic­ity and rich, unique per­son­al­ity (sounds like it could be a descrip­tion of Barcelona itself). I’ve been a Camper fan for some years. Camper make shoes, but they’re not just another shoe com­pany. Camper fuses design, mate­ri­als and mar­ket­ing to cre­ate a brand story that is mov­ingly summed up by two of their mantra-like posi­tion­ing lines: ‘The Walk­ing Soci­ety’ and ‘Imag­i­na­tion Walks.’

Wel­come to Casa Camper
Over the years I’d come across their hotel in Barcelona; Casa Camper and loved the bold­ness of that as a brand ges­ture. Imag­ine a brand that launches a hotel as part of their brand build­ing strat­egy. A cou­ple of years ago, VW fol­lowed suit with their Hotel Fox in Copen­hagen, launched to pro­mote the release of Volk­swa­gen Fox. Recently Camper opened a sec­ond Casa Camper in Berlin, under­scor­ing the ROI ben­e­fits from what might seem like an out­landish brand­ing activity.

I spent two nights in Casa Camper and thor­oughly enjoyed the detail and vibe of the brand expe­ri­ence. Casa Camper may be run as a com­mer­cially suc­cess­ful, 30 room bou­tique hotel, but it is uniquely on-brand in many dimen­sions beyond what you would expect from hotel accom­mo­da­tion. Yes the hotel was every-bit as com­fort­able as I’d desire, but the expe­ri­ence was more akin to spend­ing 48 hours in sev­eral wonder-filled chap­ters of brand story telling.

I stayed in a suite — which was huge, with walls painted in camper Red. The lounge area had a ham­mock which could be stretched-out in front of the french win­dows to the bal­cony. My after­noon sies­tas in the ham­mock as I snoozed to the sound of Barcelona life below my win­dow were among my rich­est of my mem­o­ries, and facil­i­tated for me by my ever-warmer friends at Camper.

The elec­tronic key came tucked-into the front of a Camper pocket guide to Barcelona. Every sin­gle ele­ment of the expe­ri­ence reflected the Camper brand visual iden­tity and spoke in the play­ful and adven­tur­ous Camper brand voice.

At check-in I was offered iPod cables for the stereo in my room, the safe in the bed­room is large enough for a lap­top and has a power point inside, and the in-room wire­less broad­band is free. The guests at the hotel spanned from mid-twenties to mid-sixties, but all with a sim­i­lar sense of style and adven­ture. Camper seem to have a very clear pic­ture of their tar­get mar­ket and an under­stand­ing of the extras that are mean­ing­ful to them.

Instead of in-room bar fridges, Casa Camper has a cafe open all day and into the night. The cafe is stocked with hot and cold drinks, sand­wiches, sal­ads, fruit, yogurt, deserts, baguette, ham and cheese, nuts, chips et. al. which along with a cooked break­fast came included in the cost of the room.

The hotel itself was located dead cen­tre of Barcelona. Every­thing in the city was in walk­ing dis­tance, as shown on the huge ‘walk­ing map’ of the city on the wall near recep­tion. In the sur­round­ing neigh­bor­hood a grow­ing flock of cool cafes, inde­pen­dent music and edgey fash­ion retail­ers are springing-up — tes­ta­ment the strength of the Camper brand, it casts a cul­ture chang­ing halo over the sur­round­ing streets and laneways.

Dream of Bold­ness
As brand ges­tures go, Casa Camper is a bold one. Few brand man­agers or brand own­ers think big enough to con­ceive of this type of state­ment for their brand. But just because a brand ges­ture is bold, doesn’t mean it needs to be a bud­get black hole. Few above the line brand cam­paigns could deliver the ROI of the two Camper hotels, nor could they be cre­ated for the same cost. And arguable no TVC could ever have the impact on a city that Casa Camper has on Barcelona and its vis­i­tors. We’re not talk­ing about a remark­able moment, we’re talk­ing about a mem­o­rable expe­ri­ence — and that is some­thing far deeper and longer lasting.

Clearly not all brands can afford to think as big as open­ing a hotel, but the rewards are clearly there for those who dare to dream. I would implore all brand own­ers to think about how they might dream a lit­tle big­ger, think a lit­tle bolder and con­ceive a ges­ture for their brand that could in it’s own way cre­ate a remark­able expe­ri­ence for their clients and customers.

If you think a bold brand ges­ture is just what your brand needs, we’d be only too happy to have a chat about where the oppor­tu­ni­ties may lie. Why not get in touch.

David Ansett, Bran­da­men­tal­ist.
If you’d like daily updates of our brand think­ing, you can fol­low me on Twit­ter here.

Tags: Architecture, Barcelona, Brand Agency, Brand Design, Brand Experience, Brand Strategy, Brand Voice, Brand-Loyalty, Brand-Storytelling, Camper, casa-camper, Graphic Design Melbourne, Interior Design, Melbourne Brand Strategy

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 at 11:31 am and is filed under Experiences. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.