PROJECT A

Ideas:

After the trip on Baker Street and Marylebone High Street, our group picked up three brands:

• Baskin Robins
• Sherlock Holmes Hotel
• Pedigree

At the beginning we supported the idea of taking one product brand and one service brand as it would be more challenging to try working for different areas and see the differences and implications of each.

We started from developing the mind map for the Sherlock Holmes Hotel. At the beginning we saw a room for opportunities in the outside hotel facade, it's reception area, and even the restaurant which is located at the entrance to the hotel.

However, once we made a more detailed research and developed a mind map for the current situation for this hotel, we realised that the hotel is very profitable and successful and there is not much room for improvement. The improvement that can be made would still be within the same branding direction. Therefore it wouldn't be a fully rebranding process for us. 

That is why decided to find a much lower class hotel in the same are and concentrate on rebranding it into upper-end hotel. A small hotel with a deceptive name The Four Seasons Hotel on Gloucester Place was selected. This hotel was just one of dozens other hotels on the same street. As they all appear the same from the outside look, and their websites indicate similar price range, we wanted to make it very different. We would change the interior and exterior design in conjunction with new booklets, website, and the whole image of it. Yet, after realisation of the expenses on such a rebranding, our group came to a conclusion that it may be too costly and complex. And the idea of rebranding the lower class hotel into a luxury hotel may not be vital, taking into consideration the non suitable location of it.

As we abandoned our second option, we developed the situational analysis for the other two brands...

Pedigree is a very appealing brand however all of us agreed that they haven't done any changes to the brand that would be noted by the wider customer segment. That may be very dangerous to any brand, even to the market leader, due to very fast trade competition increase in the last decades. Therefore, there is definitely a room for us to fill in with our innovative rebranding ideas.

Our other choice is Baskin Robins, a very popular ice-ceam brand. It has a very strong brand image and positioning in the minds of consumers. Nonetheless, the message it is communicating is not clear enough, it creates hesitation regarding how successful the company is at the moment, what are their strength and competitor advantages. 

All members of our group, as well as some external students, agreed that the company hasn't been innovative during last couple of years. Their competitors however, such as Ben&Jerry for instance, have a much clear strategy and standardised stores throughout the covered geographical markets.