Let me tell you a bit about Jonathan Sherrill, FORMO’s newest partner and foremost authority on Field Sport offerings for our clientele. I first met Jonathan as he and I were working with Beretta, the world’s oldest manufacturing brand. What we each brought to the collaboration was immediately complimentary and we generated breakthrough ideas with ease. Jonathan brings innovative thought to established luxury brands and understands that brand loyalty for our clientele is formed around unforgettable experiences. He’s developed strategic partnerships with the world leader in private clubs as well as with iconic resorts, Blackberry Farm and Sea Island. And he led the branding of Dover Furnace as the Beretta Shooting Grounds. He’s also a thought leader in tech-driven loyalty programs for discerning clientele. And I’m absolutely thrilled and humbled that less than a year later Jonathan and I have found a way to work together to take FORMO to another level.

Jonathan’s highly specialized expertise will fuel a new strategic unit, FORMO Field Sport.

FORMO comes from the latin “to shape, to form, to architect.” Just as FORMO architects strategy, messages and media placement, we will now be shaping one-of-a-kind experiences alongside the pristine brands that we have the privilege to represent. A common denominator in all we do is differentiation. With FORMO Field Sport, that differentiation will come through outdoor pursuits, conservation initiatives, authentic family engagement and connectivity with the outdoors and ultimately between brand and brand enthusiast.

It takes a world class intellect to create world class experiences for the some of the world’s best luxury brands. FORMO has found that in Jonathan Sherrill and we welcome him to the FORMO team.

“The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.” — Sir Winston Churchill

Steve Jobs once said, “Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.” The capacity to change is driven by the people, those rebels, those misfits, the ones who see things differently. For over five years, FORMO has been driven by an unrelenting passion to challenge conventional wisdom and become the catalyst for that type of change.

Starting today, that ability has taken an exponential leap. FORMO is expanding it’s fleet of rebellious thinkers.

FORMO has a new partner. Mark Tilghman.

I have known Mark for almost seven years. We first met at the recommendation of a mutual friend as I was a client struggling to find an expert media company. One that cared more about my brand than their agency/media relationships. I found that in Mark. I not only found a man of incredible talent and skill but also an extraordinary passion about his work. Mark had built a successful mid-sized but fairly typical ad agency with some extraordinary media thinking embedded within Mark. He possessed a singular focus on understanding, embracing and adding value to my strategy that proved to be astounding. Mark was a strategic partner long before that term became a meaningless buzzword.

Mark is an extraordinary professional and I am astounded that we now have him as a part of our team.

In a practical sense, Mark is a force multiplier for FORMO. And while our capabilities will always be based on a rebellious spirit, Mark brings FORMO capabilities in media, planning, strategy and account direction. A perfect synergism.

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind. – Sir Winston Churchill

Dell Trade Secrets eBook

I’m excited that my input was solicited and published in the Dell Trade Secrets campaign. The campaign is designed to help small businesses on a variety of topics by collecting and sharing wisdom from experts. I’m delighted and honored not only to be included in the book but to be the very first item. (page 5)

Last night was the second to last class for the course that I designed and teach at the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business Fast Track MBA Program. As I’ve mentioned before the class is titled, “Luxury Marketing” and for the most part I use luxury marketing as a continued case study of precision- guided niche marketing. In the design of the course, I bring in guest speakers from a variety of marketing and sales disciplines. The speakers are all acknowledged and highly credentialed experts in the field. They are also close friends and professional associates of mine.

In prior classes, I was fortunate to have Mark Tilghman, President of JDA USAspeak on the topic of media planning in a very tightly targeted marketing strategy. I’ve also had Todd Spangler, Sales Director for Hawker Beechcraft Corporation present a case study on sales and marketing in the Private Jet sector. Both speakers did an outstanding job and really added an element of practical expertise to the course’s content.

In last night’s class my lecture was centered on Brand Extensions, the risks and mitigating factors when luxury brands try new things. I cited several examples including several hospitality projects for which I played a role in the marketing strategy. Fortunately the highlight of the evening was not my lecture but rather my guest speaker, Mr. Campion Platt.

Campion is an extraordinary professional. Not only is he celebrated as one of the Architectural Digest Top 100 Designers but he is an absolute marketing machine for his luxury brand. Campion spoke for nearly 90 minutes on his career, his work and his book, Made to Order. Of course one of the highlights of his exceptional talk was his reference to his absolutely awesome website (A FORMO product). Campion highlighted the brand extension in his own firm and his extensions into furniture, textiles and now publishing. He used several excellent examples of very precise marketing and how this leads to his “made to order” or bespoke approach on every project. Truly an extraordinary evening for which I am very grateful to Campion.

Campion Platt

After a two week delay due to the megatron-level ice storm that hit Atlanta, I finally had the opportunity to conduct my first lecture in the Luxury Marketing Class at the prestigious Terry College of Business at The University of Georgia’s Fast Track MBA Program.

By way of background, I have 41 graduate students enrolled in the elective directed study course. The number in and of itself shocked me since I had hopeful expectations for 10 students. The students are all young professionals enrolled in a Professional MBA Program that allows them to earn their degrees while continuing in their full-time professions. In other words, they are very dedicated and very hard working people. The mix of industries represented by the students is quite wide, ranging from self-employed to Fortune 500 Companies in a variety of different industry segments. The professions are also varied, finance, accounting, marketing, and just about every other discipline.

I had a simple purpose in the first lecture:

Challenge conventional thinking about marketing of a brand by presenting a detailed look at “effective” and “ineffective” marketing in Luxury Goods and Services. The application may seem dubious at first if your buisness or firm is not engaged in the luxury sector…until I make the connection.

Effective luxury marketing is niche or Long Tail marketing. It is built on a strategy of believing that you do not have a mass market but as Chris Anderson says, “…a mass of markets.” Luxury Marketing is about targeting and engaging those niche markets.

Among all of the varied industries represented by the professionals in my class, I was unable to determine an industry where niche marketing would not have an immediate and significant benefit.

My course content consists of three main components:

1. Class Lecture and online discussion boards
2. Case Studies
3. Guest Speakers

Since this was the first class, it consisted primarily of class lecture which I’ve uploaded to Youtube as a movie you can watch below. You may need to stop and start the movie to read all of the slides. I’ll post more after the next class which will include a guest speaker, Mr. Lincoln Jackson, Group Publisher at Curtco Media, (The Robb Report).

One of the defining trends of the last decade was the resort real estate & hotel development. From all perspectives it made sense, a real estate product that would provide a faster return to the developer than the resort hotel combined with an operating luxury hotel with its long play and consistent cash flow. Theoretically, a sound idea. And with abundant mortgage deals and a growing affluent or pseudo-affluent segment, an easy sell.


Not so easy, anymore.


1. Luxury resort hotel marketing is based on the hotels market segmentation: leisure travelers, business travelers and group or convention business. A luxury hotel can create an optimal balance of these different segments in order to maximize revenues. The marketing is then a target-based strategy to match supply to demand in each segment for the hotel. Occupancy, ADR (average daily rate) and REVPAR (revenue per available room) are the standard industry performance metrics of any hotel.


2. Successful resort real estate marketing is based on niche targeting of specific lifestyle and other psychographic variables of individuals, couples and families. The goal is to match the lifestyle defined by the brand with the personal taste and preferences of each niche. [NOTE: There are for all practical purposes no speculative real estate investors in the US today.]


3. The resort real estate sales model continues to focus on traditional broker-led, opportunity sales approach, i.e. a sales prospect walks in the door. The problem is nobody is walking in the door while the inventory of luxury resort real estate property is so large that the noise overwhelms the few prospects that exist.


Diagnosis: Targeting hotel customers does not equal targeting real estate prospects. It is generally ineffective.


Symptom: Hotel business but no sales. In other words plenty of convention badges in the hotel but no prospects to buy the real estate.


Treatment: Employ hybrid “long tail” marketing strategies that target specific niche or clusters as hotel leisure guests. The targeted niches are selected based upon lifestyle match with the potential real estate product. Secondarily, real estate prospects are targeted with a lifestyle match and the resort hotel is used as part of the real estate sales pipeline. Thirdly, blow-up the traditional concept of the real estate sales model in favor of innovative new solutions.


A very good friend of mine and an expert in resort real estate sales likened it to the cardiac patient in need of emergency open heart surgery yet most hotel operators continue to feed the patient aspirin. His point is well made, these resort & real estate developments amassed hundreds of millions in debt financing based on assumptions of high hotel REVPAR and cash flow with steady real estate sales only to have neither.


Billions in high quality resort real estate remains unsold today with luxury resort developments swimming in debt they cannot possibly service with the auto parts dealers conventions alone.


The challenge is in getting the paradigms pushed aside, the corporate bureaucracy to accept intervention and the heart surgery to begin.

A luxury hotel, like any other business, is driven by cash flow. That cash flow is forecasted based upon basic economic assumptions about supply and demand. All very straightforward. Yet the risk for any resort hotel is not in the forecast but rather, the assumptions. The assumptions are at the foundation of every action in a marketing plan. For example, an advertising line item is used to buy campaigns. The campaigns are assumed to increase demand and thus generate more inquiries, bookings and ultimately revenue. So if the assumption is that advertising increases demand, then the risk is in the assumption itself. Does advertising increase demand? How do you know? How much?


Which belies my point: Do typical luxury resort marketing plans measure the performance of each of these tactics to determine if the assumption is indeed valid and therefore draw any conclusion about the efficacy of the tactic? In short: Are we measuring the advertising campaign to see if it does what it’s supposed to?


In my experience the typical resort marketing plan is filled with vague generalizations like:


“…generate buzz…”
“…drive sales…”
“…increase brand awareness…”


Or the plan cites a direct tactical measurement of bookings. While measurement of bookings is indeed important, it only provides a part of the picture and often provides no measure at all in the case of a magazine ad or PR media hit.


The bottom line (literally speaking) is accountability. The marketing director is held accountable for the plan but how about the results and measures? Indeed, the marketing director should be held accountable for the results BUT ALSO for quantitative and qualitative measures to validate or invalidate (and then rethink) every tactic in a marketing plan.


What I am suggesting is something new to the typical resort marketing plan…an audit. The term comes to mind from the audit of financial statements by independent parties in order to establish their validity. A marketing audit should be conducted on the resort’s marketing plan to challenge its assumptions, ensure there are valid performance measures and ultimately help the accountable parties do a better job or push them to rethink flawed assumptions and INNOVATE.


In the end, ask yourself this question: Which affects future revenue more? A marketing plan or an audit of an accurate financial statement?


So why not use the same approach? At best you may help the marketing team to do better, at worst it’s an independent validation.

1. Analytics – Scour your analytics in minute detail. Understand the real strengths and weaknesses of your current site from the perspective of your Users (clients). Luxury marketing is niche marketing, applying broad generalizations about your discriminating clientele will fail.


2. Understand your users (audience) niche – What type of mobile device to they use, what will they use a year from now. What are they looking for in your site? How do you make it sticky and bring them back? Do you really know them? Do your personas reflect real knowledge about the audience and their online habits or simply base demographics.


3. Understand and aggressively employ great ideas in design – Pay attention to what is happening in web development and information architecture. Listen to the conversations and then apply the points to your project. Don’t rely simply on your own expertise but be humble enough to accept that you don’t have all the ideas, there are a lot of great thinkers out there talking about fascinating and relevant topics that can measurably improve your site, challenge conventional wisdom in your marketing team.


4. Visual comes last – If you get the strategy and architecture right, your site will perform very well. Visual design is important but it does not precede the absolute of getting the foundation right. A great building does not begin with a rendering, it begins with engineering and planning. Web Development is no different.


5. It’s all connected – The web is giant cobweb of information about your brand. Your job as a strategist is to find those connections and make logical sense of them. Your website should be at the center of this “cobweb” and your branding the silk that links it all together. Your site must seemlessly provide and connect to all of the content and related content chunks that exist in your brand’s universe.


The result: The site for the Turks & Caicos Sporting Club at Ambergris Cay that we launched last week in collaboration with our digital partners at {e} house studios.


Click here to visit The Turks & Caicos Sporting Club at Ambergris Cay

Ok, there are more than 8 but I couldn’t help but share these, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the level of understanding of digital strategy is generally weak or the industry has become so mired in tradition that bad practices are being mistaken for best.  Here’s my list:

1. Website’s are for e commerce. Wrong, websites are for clients (guests). If a booking engine is the only thing on your site that engages them, then the answer is yes. If, however, your clients want and need more out of your digital platform that dates, rates and space, then this is a seriously flawed assumption. The fundamental question is one of strategy not e commerce tactics. And that question begins very simply, What are your clients looking for online? Do you know or are you assuming?


2. Style over content. I didn’t originate it but truly, CONTENT IS KING, repeat CONTENT IS KING. Every top performing site in every single industry has content directly relevant to their client base. If your web experts are showing  you visual designs before addressing strategy, substance or content…start over. Or if you think you’ll have a better website if you have more FLASH or another visual design…start over. The point is that a strategy about your content is fundamental to increasing the performance of your site.


3. Don’t use a Copy Machine. Don’t copy other hotel’s websites and don’t hire web development companies that give you the same site they gave somebody else, unless of course your hotel owner, asset manager or board has asked you to finish in second place. If you are considering web developers or agencies, look at their portfolio, if their portfolio sites all have similar IA (Information Architecture) run away.


4. Go Big. Mad Men is a fictitious television show. In the digital sphere, innovation and great marketing can come from a one person shop, a small firm or a mega agency. Big does not guarantee success. Recently I worked with a client that used the “biggest name in Hospitality Websites”. Sounds good but too bad that firm didn’t know squat about strategy. This is not about buying power, the ability to run focus groups or massive staff. It’s about finding a partner that can understand your clients and what they need in an online experience and creating a strategy that is unique to you…and measurably effective in adding value to your hotel.


5. Non-expert experts. The IT Department is not synonymous with web development or digital strategy. True professionals that they are, they are no more qualified for web strategy than the rooms executive is in designing a Food &Beverage POS system. All geeks are not alike. Beware of advertising agencies masquerading as web development companies, those are not the same. Marketing Services has increasingly become a niche industry, don’t be afraid to mix and match. The bottom line is to drive the value to your hotel.


6. Misunderstanding web metrics or worse, ignoring them. Do you read and actively analyze your metrics to understand what your clients are doing, consuming and most importantly, ignoring on your digital platforms? Do you know the percentage of your visitors that watch your virtual tour? all of it? And if they bounce or exit from that page? Is your web development company digging deep into these metrics or are they touting the growth in visits? Have you asked about your PageRank and how this strategy will raise it?


7. SEM solves everything. Yes indeed, if you sell SEM (Search Marketing). But if you are a hotel marketing chief then you need to be as concerned about quality as quantity. Do you know if more visit traffic has a strong positive correlation to increased engagement, bookings or loyalty? Think of SEM (Marketing) as a tactic but SEO (Optimization) as a strategic outcome. There is a very big and important difference to the value you add to your hotel’s revenue strategy.


8. Digital Marketing = Website. Wrong. Digital marketing is a cobweb of interconnected pieces, in fact I’ve diagrammed this cobweb on the FORMO website. The silk that connects the pieces is your brand positioning. From Facebook to Websites, SEM, SEO, micro-sites, Twitter feeds, advertising splash pages, and YouTube videos ~ these are components of an underlying digital strategy. This strategy should form the basis of  your marketing plan. If it’s not, which in the hospitality industry is very likely, then you need help. Seek expert help before your competitors find it.


I hope this is helpful, my list is not all encompassing and I’m absolutely certain that my peers in the digital sphere can add another copy block, but the point is that a Digital Marketing Strategy is perhaps the single most important factor for any hotel.


If you are the equity fund owner, the General Manager, The Marketing Director or even a bellman, it is the factor that will ultimately add the most value to your hotel. If you don’t believe me, then ask your General Manager how much business they got through Expedia back in the day.



Robert@formosite.com

1. Launches fail. The era of the sales launch weekend was not only short lived but it is effectively over. The over-used strategy was to create hype and a false sense of urgency around buying up front. And while the strategy may have driven initial sales when cheap money was available, that is certainly not the case today. Luring buyers with hyped up launches and attempting to create a false sense of urgency in this market can have the opposite effect. Not only will it fail to lure buyers but it has the potential to create a brand image of conveying misleading information. In other words, the entire market knows that real estate development is at a very low point, using misleading statements about the market that are easily verifiable on Google will only damage the marketing efforts. The developer and brand will not be trusted and sales risk rises in a negative correlation to brand trust.


2. Investor speculators are out of the market – focus on the user. The marketing strategy of a development should be based on the eventual residents. Who are they? What do they want in a development? What elements of their particular lifestyle can you satisfy to the degree that they will buy? The marketing then focuses on those lifestyle elements as the core-messaging strategy. Defining a marketing strategy based on investment potential or speculative buyers, as in the case of vacation or second home property, is a very low return, highly risky strategy. Instead valid marketing strategies focus on the lifestyle interests of buyers. If you find the sweet spot between your brand and their personal passions and needs, the demand curve shifts upward.


3. Digital rules. Every one of your potential buyers will research the development online. They will search competitor properties, evaluate your lifestyle amenities and validate or disprove any claims you make. Consequently digital marketing must be the core around which all of your marketing is based. Chris Anderson, Author of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is selling less of more said, “Your brand is what Google says your brand is, not what you say your brand is.” While this generalization highlights the extraordinary influence that search and other digital media have on a brand, I believe that the relevance to real estate developers is to understand the dialogue and the nature of information, then build a strategy to optimize the multitude of touch points across digital networks.


4. Customization and niche marketing. Ask any development marketer about tactics and undoubtedly you’ll hear direct mail. Of course it will be qualified that the response rates are typically 1 – 3%. BS. Response rates on direct mail (printed) are probably closer to 0 than 3% and the response rates on digital (email) are why spammer’s exist, i.e. the response rate is a fraction of a percent. Both tactics can work, if you are prepared to undertake a massive and sustained effort. For example a .01% response rate yields 10 leads from 100,000 people. An alternative strategy is based on highly customized or niche direct marketing tactics that leverage the enormous potential of database technology with variable data publishing (both print and digital). The example I typically use is imagining a typical direct mail campaign of 5000 pieces. Each person gets the same piece except for the mailing label; now imagine 5000 different pieces going to 5000 different people. Each recipient’s piece was made specifically for them based on their preferences, likes and needs embedded in the database. This hybrid can easily yield double-digit response rates. Reliance on “spray and pray” marketing tactics are not only ill-advised in today’s market but can add significant risk to developer absorption assumptions. Variable data with it’s highly customized and niche targeting can reduce risk in absorption and decrease costs over the long run as ROI increases.


These are just four of the laundry list of common mistakes that are at the core of failed marketing strategies. I’ve highlighted just a few of the emerging trends that are powering successful marketing strategies in many diverse sectors. If you are a developer, marketer or funding source the entire list of common mistakes and emerging trends should be at the top of your marketing meeting agenda.


FORMO not only prepares some of the most innovative marketing strategies in the industry today but we also consult to groups looking for expert eyes to ad value to their own strategy.