Many marketing hospitality directors find themselves asking, “How do we honor our legacy while embracing change? What elements of our brain do we keep, and what do we reinvent?”
In this recap of Social Pulse: Hospitality Edition, powered by Agorapulse, guest Ashley Currin, Director of Marketing at CSI DMC, brings unique insights into the delicate art of brand evolution during major organizational change. Ashley is currently steering one of the industry’s most significant mergers between CSI DMC and 360 DG.
[Listen to the full episode below, or read along for the transcript of the Social Pulse: Hospitality Edition, powered by Agorapulse. Try it for free today.]
What challenges did you identify when you planned this merger of two established brands?
Ashley Currin: The big thing is we’re two established brands with an incredible amount of brand equity, and I think the conversation is always, “How do you take those two brands, bring them together, preserve that equity, but also build something new and something exciting?”
The key for me has been people and clients first.
We’ve said that mantra from the beginning. My counterpart at 360 Destination Group on the marketing side, everything with our internal and external communications has been, “How do we make sure that we are building along the culture that we’ve already created in both brands and making sure that they’re along for the journey and then communicating that journey to our clients so that they can also feel like they’re being brought along for the journey as well?”
And as you’ll learn, and as you know, it’s not an easy lift. So, it’s developing that strategic approach to make sure that we can make a meaningful impact as we continue and start this journey.
In starting your strategic impact, were there specific steps that you took to evaluate the existing brand equity from both companies?
Ashley Currin: Yeah, and we’re in that right now, to be honest and transparent, Mike.
The big thing for us was to make sure that the initial push and the initial rush, when it comes to a merger acquisition, is that initial communications plan. So, how do we make sure that people are understanding and learning what our true objectives are?
That messaging in the forefront of what we communicated was: We’re continuing to do business as separate entities until we actually have a new brand to launch, because we want to make sure that our clients feel supported. Oftentimes, they’re working with teams and destinations that they’ve worked with for multiple programs over multiple years. We want to make sure they have that continuity, so that was a key part of that strategic communications plan, so that people are feeling supported despite there being this kind of moment of transition.
And then our next big stage of it was obviously understanding exactly what we need to do to build a new brand.
The key to that is finding a great agency partner, so that was our next big stage is to figure out who we wanted to go along this journey with in terms of the brand identity and the digital presence that we’re going to build and again, sunsetting our old brands to make sure that we’re still retaining the equity but pushing it towards this new future brand that we’re developing. So that was where we are right now. It’s that next stage, and then I think thirdly—and where we’re going to go in the future is—we’re going to continue to audit what’s working for both brands.
Where can we diversify our offerings? Where can we streamline our offerings? Where can we pivot and embrace new ideas to make sure that we’re keeping the best of the best and we’re losing the rest, so to speak?
Because we want to walk away with this as, “Hey, we’ve done this thoughtfully, and we’re going to do it the best as we can to support our clients moving forward.”
Could you share about these different brands?
Ashley Currin: Yeah. I think destination management is sometimes, often overlooked area of the hospitality world.
Everyone’s familiar with hospitality when it comes to venues or vendors or hotels, especially, but destination management companies are the boots on the ground. The local expertise, when corporate groups are coming into destinations, understand the market, they understand the vendors, they understand the local impact, and can develop thoughtful exciting creative program elements for groups that are coming in.
We look at ourselves as being that kind of secret sauce. Once you’ve picked your hotel and you’ve picked your destination, we come in and do the rest.
And so that’s a luxury service that we offer our clients is the partnership ability to blow it out of the water to make it the most memorable experience for your guests and your attendees.
How are you approaching the challenge of maintaining their confidence in the brands while also trying to make all these significant changes to these brands?
Ashley Currin: Yeah, I think the key is that we both come from a very similar culture, both CSI DMC and 360 destination group, and that was imperative right in this kind of merger of equals.
And I think the key that we are finding is the communications about where we are right now and where we’re going, but the messaging to our clients is, “Hey, we are going to be able to offer you so much more.” We walked in with our unique offerings of destinations that were smaller in scope, and now we’re going to be able to offer expertise in 46 destinations across the country.
So, we have honed in on this message of, “It’s going to be the same but better and bigger. We’re going to be able to offer you more, we’re going to be able to have more support behind you to execute events wherever you go.”
And so it’s merging those messages together of “It’s going to be better, but we’re going to keep the things that are the best the best, and that cultural aspect is not going anywhere.”
What role has digital marketing played in communicating transformative changes to all the various stakeholders that you’re talking to?
Ashley Currin: Yeah, now I think the key was at the very beginning stages was making sure that we had one-on-one conversations with our key clients to expand on what this merger was about. And then, from there, we ramped up our digital marketing efforts, making sure that our kind of clients, more broadly, were provided the message of what this merger means.
We’ve made some changes to our website to make sure that there’s a continual messaging opportunity about what the transformation looks like, people can come back in, they can see what’s going on, that kind of continual pulse point. And then I think what we’ve done, too, that we felt was important, is embracing this idea of being these two separate entities starting out and retaining that until we are a new brand, and being thoughtful and considerate about where our messaging does unify.
When it comes to what we want to say together as a unified CSI DMC and 360 DG approach, we take that with thoughtful consideration. So, while it seems exciting and it seems tempting to run a run out of the gate and be like, ”Hey, we’re one unified company, and we want our messaging to be aligned and we want all of our digital strategy to be aligned,” we took the time to be thoughtful about that so that we can make sure that we’re ramping that up at an appropriate speed.
Could you share a specific branding element that proved particularly challenging to evolve and how you addressed it?
Ashley Currin: For us, we are at the very beginning stages of onboarding our agency partner. I think the biggest challenge that we are going to face is this naming piece, right?
When you’re in this brand evolution, the name can have so much emotion tied to it, as well as there’s the tactical side. There’s the pressure testing and trademarking that comes with it, but that name is so important and valuable to set the tone as you create this design architecture. So, while we haven’t hit that challenge yet, we know that’s going to be one of those first challenges for us, which is to unify and get behind a name.
But I think that’s why you pick a great agency partner, and you lean on someone who you know has that expertise and can unify stakeholders early on to rally behind the names so that we can make sure that we nail that out of the gate.
As you’re going through all of these changes, transformations, and evolutions, how are you measuring success through all of this?
Ashley Currin: I think the early onset success has to be engagement, right? How are we getting the engagement from our customers, from our clients, from our internal team?
So I think that’s the key thing there.
I think, as we continue down and we are in the digital evolution phase of the new brand and building out our UX and UI for our website, that’s when we can dig into the meat of “What does the consumer journey look like, and how can we make sure that it is shored up to be a successful consumer journey?”
And then we’re going to lean heavily on what that post-launch engagement and brand awareness looks like. I think there’s something to be said in a brand like this, a lot of what you’re going to gain from a data set is awareness and engagement. And those are sometimes hard to quantify.
But I think it’s important that we think about those two things as being the key pivotal moments for us to be able to say, “Okay, we’ve hit an area of success if we can meet those KPIs within the engagement and the awareness perspective, so I think that’s going to be key.”
I think we’re going to be able to streamline our workflows and processes under one brand. We have a strong side with the 360 destination group with their digital marketing efforts and their performance marketing, so I think that will also lead to the ability to shore up and set us up for success to understand our consumer journey.
So I think there are a lot of things that are going to define success, but I think the early metrics when you’re starting off from a branding approach are going to be that awareness and that engagement.
Are there any other resources or industry experts, influencers, whatever, that you’ve turned to for help, guidance, or inspiration during this whole process?
Ashley Currin: Having a strategic agency partner when you’re in this place is important.
I think the key tip is you don’t know everything, and as marketing folks, I think we’re sometimes generalists in a lot of areas. So it’s okay to say, I need to have some expertise in this space to make sure that I’m thinking through everything that I need to think through. So I think that’s been incredibly important. We’ve had such incredible support from an integration and leadership perspective as well in navigating this new world.
And I would say, for me, it’s just leaning on, leaning on our team. Our team is incredibly well-versed; they’ve been through mergers and acquisitions before, especially on our leadership side, so having that guidance and expertise from inside the room makes a huge difference.
So, I think those are the kinds of things that I think are valuable.
Mike Allton: Those are incredibly valuable, and I hope everyone listening, if you’re going through or about to go through this kind of experience, that you have the luxury of being able to turn to an outsourced agency or have team members on staff who’ve been through something like this before.
I guess if you haven’t, that is another way where AI can help you. You can turn to AI as a resource if you give it the right context. Make it into a kind of AI work buddy and have it understand. Make sure it understands what you’re going through, and it can give you tremendous advice.
What advice would you give to other hospitality marketing leaders who might be facing challenges like this in the future?
Ashley Currin: I don’t think it’s a challenge, it’s an opportunity, and I think that approach can make the messaging feel hopeful and optimistic and exciting, so I think my biggest piece of advice would be to take it slow. It feels like a big ramp-up to that announcement phase.
And there’s a lot of PR that goes into it, a lot of messaging, internal external comms, all of the considerations that come with just announcing something like this and then there can be a bit of a lull as you start merging the two worlds and understanding, and that’s okay, you don’t have to rush it.
And that allows you the time to take an audit of the assets that you currently have, take an audit of your marketing technology stack, and take an audit of the partners that you may work with from an external support or freelancer side of things.
You’re evaluating all of those resources and taking that moment to breathe and make sure that you’re making strategic decisions for the future of your company is incredibly important because ultimately, what does a merger and acquisition mean? Its growth and its strategic growth in the future. And, hopefully, we want to be set up for success no matter where we go.
Learn wisdom and insights from hospitality experts in every episode of Social Pulse: Hospitality Edition.
So I would say, take it slow. Don’t feel like you have to build it all overnight. And then just making sure that you bring your internal stakeholders and external stakeholders along on the journey.
We say all the time that our biggest brand ambassadors are our team, and when we launch this new brand, we will be nothing without them. So they need to be prepared and excited, and enthusiastic to go out into the world and talk about all the wonderful things that are coming out of this merger.
And that’s so important and almost equally as important as developing the external messaging and the external involvement and engagement.
So I think that another key one is just knowing your team is going to have the biggest impact on how they message this and how they continue to engage in business. And so we want to make sure that they’re bought in and they’re excited, and we’re always thinking about them.
Thank you for reading the highlights of this episode of Social Pulse: Hospitality, powered by Agorapulse.
And don’t forget to find the Social Pulse Podcast: Hospitality Edition on Apple, as well as other editions like the Retail, Agency, and B2B.
