Hospitality

As one of the world's leading network of hotels and resorts, operating close to 5,000 major facilities in hundreds of countries, this hospitality conglomerate came to Pica9 needing a local marketing automation solution.

The hotel company's enterprise also encompasses more than 600 franchise management companies - each of which is responsible for reviewing and approving marketing communications activities created by personnel at the property(ies) it owns. Franchise management company holdings often span brand and region boundaries, adding complexity to both the production work flow, and the provision of access to digital assets such as photography, logos, maps, etc.

In early 2008, this major hotel organization made a strategic decision to evolve from a "pan-brand" look in its advertising and marketing materials into a communications architecture that includes a distinct "brand voice" for each of its nine major brands. The challenge for Pica9 was to develop an enterprise-level brand management system center, that would:

-Accelerate the spread of awareness about the new brand voice for each brand as it was released from the branding agency and brand management departments at headquarters.
-Enable the rapid, low-cost creation of advertisements and marketing materials-from stationery to menus, to rack cards, postcards and online banners--complying with the new brand voice for each brand.
-Provide local users with an easy-to-use Digital Asset Management system, that ensures easy access to brand-compliant photography, while enforcing rights-management rules and policies.
-Provide an integrated Brand Resource Center, with easy access to Standards and Guidelines about the new brand voice, to assist local agencies and marketers as they developed marketing and advertising materials.
-Migrate thousands of properties to this new "brand voice architecture" as quickly and efficiently as possible, given the availability of approved designs, photography, and supporting messaging content.

Since the launch of the Pica9 system in May 2008, we have seen the following results for this hospitality company:

-400+% growth in registered users, as measured against the user base of the
predecessor system.
-600% growth in brand-related assets, to a total today of more than 100,000 brand-approved, rights-managed photographs; 1,600 brand and property-specific logos, and close to 5,000 property specific maps. The asset library also includes videos, presentations, Word documents, PDFs, and other documents used by brand and local marketers.
-1000% growth in property specific assets.
-300% growth in monthly logins.
-400% growth in document generation
-Top ease of use ratings in user surveys (5 out of 5 for ease and for overall satisfaction).

Throughout the implementation of this system and to this day, Pica9 has performed as an extension of the Field Marketing Operation for the brands, providing:

System Architecture, Design, and Implementation- Pica9 developed the data model to support the multi-brand, multi-channel, multi-national requirements of the hotel company. We handled every aspect of system development, testing, and deployment, and continue to design and implement system enhancements in response to ongoing brand- and enterprise-level requirements.

Interface Design- The Pica9 team works closely with the hospitality company's internal and external-agency designers to ensure that the system's interface faithfully reflects the spirit and voice of the respective brands. Because our design partners often bring a print-centric background to the project, one of our chief roles is to highlight the usability implications of design elements, and to help arrive at design solutions that achieve consistency and simplicity, while retaining the designer's desired look and feel.

International Font and Typography Consultation- One of the ongoing challenges we face as the separate brands roll out design templates, is to anticipate the issues created by different character sets and writing systems. In this capacity, we consult with a broad range of non-US design and advertising agencies (Grey Dubai, Lord Dentsu Tokyo, Proximity London) to test and refine the implementation of typography within the system's dynamic templates.

Asset Management Training- We provide regular guidance and training for new creative administrators on the proper use of keywords and metatags, to ensure that assets, once uploaded into the DAM system, are made accessible to users in the easiest, most relevant fashion possible. Over time, this work has prompted us to create a unique keyword "vocabulary" that is unique to the hospitality industry generally, and to the hospitality organization's community specifically. We are continually examining statistics on asset searches to optimize the tagging of assets, and to further refine our training methodologies, with the objective of achieving continuous improvements in (a) the percentage of assets downloaded by users, and (b) the number of searches that result in a successful "asset find" and download.

Web Content Management Training- The Pica9 system is equipped with content management features that allow brand administrators to update the content of many pages, directing user attention to new features, templates, assets, campaigns, etc. We provide regular training and guidance to new administrators on basic concepts in web content management, including content styling, copyfitting, page layout considerations, and the proper use of hyperlinks, both within the system and to external resources.

Creative Content Management Training- Because of the uniquely flexible nature of Pica9 dynamic templates, brand designers can install new campaigns and concepts by entering new messaging, and associating that content with the desired visual assets in the image library. Using our backend tools, this means that an entirely new campaign can be styled and deployed in a matter of minutes. Pica9 provides regular web-based training sessions for new creative administrators to help create this foundation of understanding; we also provide one-on-one assistance to brand managers and designers whenever the need arises.

Administrative/Reporting Training- The breadth and volume of data generated by the Pica9 system is now increasing rapidly, given adoptions across all brands and all geographic regions. Given this evolution, we regularly confer with our brand administrators on the use of the system's Reporting Module, to help them generate the different reports that their many different constituents (at corporate, brand, region, franchise, and property) levels require.

Continuing evolution of brand voice strategy and guidelines- When the system was formally launched (May 2008), not one of the nine brands target brands had fully developed its brand voice architecture. Instead, brand-voice strategies, architectures, and work flow rules have emerged in a more or less steady stream since system launch. This ongoing evolution compelled Pica9 to build a system architecture that could adapt easily to new content. In this regard, the Pica9 system is an excellent example of our fundamental principle-that is, that the best way to build a dynamic document generation and brand management system is to offer a small piece of functionality at first, and then to listen actively to the user community to determine which capabilities to release next, and with what kinds of features/logic. This active dialogue between user community and development team is a hallmark of the Agile approach and is, we believe the most reliable way to develop an enterprise-class system that meets its goals for user adoption, degree of automation, and ultimately, cost savings.