Small Luxury Hotels of the World™ (SLH) will be launching a new brand advertising campaign on 4 April 2016. The campaign, Unadvertise, sees SLH cementing its new brand positioning and embracing its anti-brand status with a bold move away from traditional hotel marketing. The campaign, which will run until the end of the year across key global markets, signifies a $1 million spend, the most the luxury brand has invested in above the line advertising in its 25 year history.
Unadvertise lauds the fact that SLH guests are too intelligent to succumb to generic tourism advertising showcasing infinity pools and staged imagery of people having fun. Instead, the advertisements celebrate the fact that independently-minded people can’t be convinced what to do through advertising and PR, and reminds them that an SLH hotel is a refreshingly original and individual choice.
Tim Davis, Vice President Brand and Marketing at SLH, explains the thinking behind the campaign further: “It’s too easy to pick out an incredible image of a hotel and put a logo on it. How does that differentiate one hotel or company from any other? With this campaign we were looking to strike a chord with our independently-minded guests, to really show the personal and authentic experience that staying at any one of our independently-spirited hotels can offer. We hope this campaign will get existing and potential guests thinking and leave their minds open to experiences and possibilities. We don’t feel the need to patronise our guests to encourage them to patronise our 520 hotels around the world.”
Working with media partners across key markets including the USA, UK, Australia, Germany, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong and China the campaign will be live in print and online targeting the affluent traveller. Confirmed partners include Bloomberg, Departures, the Financial Times, Boisdale Life and Travel + Leisure, who have been chosen based on their strong online presence, distribution and international reach.
This campaign follows on from the success of SLH’s 2015 campaign, At Your (Secret) Service, which took a similar approach of using stand-out creative not immediately associated with hotels or holidays. The campaign which invited people to apply for 25 places on SLH’s Mystery Inspector programme received over 3,500 entries and generated a surge in traffic and reservations to the website, www.slh.com.
