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Luxury yachts and marketing – a difficult mix?

By Design, Luxury, Print No Comments

You would think a yacht as beautiful as Twizzle would charter itself, but in reality like any other product, however stunning, super yachts need carefully designed materials to help them stand out in a crowded, however elite, marketplace.

DLK Partners describe themselves as ‘A fusion of creativity & commerce’ and this describes exactly how we approached designing the charter brochure for this luxury sailing yacht. We were very lucky that the owners bought into this concept so were always open to ideas and suggestions on how we could ‘sell’ Twizzle to its best advantage. For example, whilst the first set of photographs the owners commissioned were stunning, some important features that would help charter the yacht were missing, so the owners kindly agreed to arrange another photo shoot. It also helped that one of the owners is also a fantastic photographer!

The concept behind the brochure was to take the reader on a virtual journey, as if they were being led on a personal guided tour. This helped give the brochure pace and intrigue – as believe it or not there are only so many photos of a luxury yacht sailing on the oceans you can look at before you get bored.

Getting the right balance between images and the written word was vital. Obviously the photographic element took precedence over the copy, but the copy had an important dual role as well. Firstly to provide factual information and secondly to highlight key selling points, so if the reader only skimmed through the brochure they would still get a good impression of what made Twizzle so special.

Finally the brochure had to sell the nautical lifestyle and that basically Twizzle is a floating hotel, so yet another level of information to be carefully placed in this jigsaw of a brochure.

No one ever said selling a luxury product is easy – we believe it requires a balance between delicate taste and cold hard commerce.

Moving from IndependentZ to Chainz

By Design, Hotels, Print No Comments

How should a hotel change its branding and design strategy when it changes from having one hotel in its portfolio to two or more? Or indeed should it change at all?

DLK Partners’ client Sleeperz Hotels have recently added a hotel in Newcastle to its portfolio to sit alongside its original hotel in Cardiff. Sleeperz launched its first hotel on the brand statement: ‘ Stay in style for less’ as the hotel’s rates were definitely in the budget sector, but the offering was not.

One of the key selling points of the original hotel was whilst it never pretended to be something it wasn’t, i.e. a five star luxury hotel, it did offer guests a level of style, comfort and service that one normally associated with a more expensive hotel. The personal service level was very important, and was something that the owners were keen to continue when the second hotel opened. The architecture of the hotels, whilst not miles apart, was not identical and this too summed up the Sleeperz approach to running a hotel.

So how could the design of all the new literature help with this conundrum?

Obviously the most important factor was to keep the Sleeperz brand identity and message consistent throughout both hotels, but the owners were adamant that like their approach to architecture, they did not want a ‘one size fits all’ take on all the new marketing and hotel collateral. DLK’s approach to design was to utilize all the formats, colour ways etc that had been used previously, but to add the appropriate hotel location to differentiate the pieces. This subtle addition of either Cardiff or Newcastle added the personal touch that the client required – you might be staying in a chain of hotels now, but this hotel whilst it adheres to the Sleeperz principles – is still run as an individual hotel and treats its guests likewise.

It seems you can now stay in a truly independent chain of hotels.