When a global business gets new owners, a new CEO and a new HQ, a unified identity becomes essential. But how to create an overarching image that leaves room for individual brands? Marino Donati finds out how Hilton Worldwide did it

In the business world, the name Hilton has been synonymous with hotels, travelling and accommodation since the company was started by Conrad Hilton in 1919.

But underneath the mighty heritage of the Hilton name, the company itself includes ten separate subbrands, including Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts, Conrad Hotels & Resorts, Doubletree, Embassy Suites Hotels, Hampton Inn & Suites, Homewood Suites by Hilton, Home2 Suites by Hilton and Hilton Grand Vacations, all with their take on the Hilton identity.

The company now has 3,400 hotels in 79 countries but until not long ago the US arm of the corporation and the international side of the business were completely separate entities with different owners.

This all changed when the two parts merged and Blackstone investment group in 2007 bought the Hilton Hotels Corporation in 2007. A new CEO, Chris Nassetta, was appointed, and the company moved to a new headquarters in McLean, Virginia, from its previous home in California’s Beverly Hills.

The business realised it had to create a more unified overall corporate identity for its business partners, franchisees and other business facing sides, which would also be an umbrella for all of its existing consumer-facing sub-brands.

Hilton Worldwide’s president of global brands and commercial services, Paul Brown, explains that creating the umbrella corporate identity of Hilton Worldwide, launched in September, was also an opportunity to redefine and put into sharp focus the values of the company, to celebrate its heritage while also looking to the future.

“We needed to communicate internally and externally that Hilton was one company, whereas before Hilton Corporation and Hilton International had been separate,” says Brown. “This was as much as anything to signal to the employees and franchisees that it was a global entity. But it was also an opportunity to communicate our values and vision.”

Brown says Hilton did not do a lot of market research before embarking on the rebrand, mainly because much of the changes are not consumer facing. A small team of CEO Chris Nassetta, Brown and a couple of senior team members were involved, with the process taking just six months.

“I’d speak to the CEO once a week and the agency every couple of days,” says Brown. “We talked to some of the employees and then talked to a selection of agencies about what they thought the pros and cons of rebranding would be and asked if they could give us some examples, and that all made us feel we were on the right track. We eventually went with Landor.”

Brand consultants Landor had worked with Hilton previously on various smaller projects for some of their sub-brands. Landor’s executive creative director Chris Lehmann says: “It was fast paced and competitive. There was a pitch process although we had worked with Hilton before over the last four or five years. We had to turn things around pretty quickly, so we didn’t want to get involved in a lot of corporate navel gazing. We looked at the competition for Hilton, we looked at how the industry thought about the brand and did some key interviews within the organisation, and everyone was on board with the changes.

“Because Hilton was a mixture of different entities – the US company, the international business and various other acquisitions that had happened – different sub-cultures existed and the logo meant different things in the US than it did internationally.”

According to Brown and Lehmann, other names for the company were considered, but the name Hilton Worldwide was finally agreed upon as it encompassed the international span of the business and would fit well as an umbrella name.

Brown says: “We did some consumer research and focus groups on the name and it was positive. The Hilton Worldwide name was also not actually completely new as it had been used on a small scale with certain business uses previously. And we already owned the name and the URLs so that helped.”

Hilton’s corporate logo and accompanying imagery was also in need of tweaking as it also suffered from the same lack of coherence and unity across the different parts of the business.

“There were times when the corporation would use the same imagery and logos for its overall corporate brand as it did for some of its individual brands which created challenges,” says Brown. “It meant that there was the potential for confusion when talking about the business. People could think ‘Are you talking about all your brands or just one brand?’ We needed to signal that we are a multi-brand business as well as a one global brand and create an overall logo that could also sit side by side with any of the individual brands.”

The approach to creating the logo also reflected the mixture of heritage and forward thinking that Brown says are some of the business’ core values.

He says: “We wanted to make sure we weren’t turning our back on the past – this is a 90 year-old company – but strike a balance between a nod to the past and showing we were also looking to the future.”

The final logo uses a sans serif typeface creating a more modern look that is thin and subtle, creating a luxury feel with the ‘H’ shape also reminiscent of a bed. Landor’s Lehmann explains: “We looked at the H and through the historical archives. We made the H wider, curvier and split it between the top and bottom with the platinum and gold which signified the quality, stature and heritage of the Hilton brand.”

Brown says that the logo captures the rich culture of the company. “It shows the two halves coming together, and is similar to the 60s and 70s H used on some of the hotels, a nod to a rich period when the company was expanding very rapidly.”

He adds: “The imagery that Landor came up with was very different to what any of us had in our head. I don’t think any of us would have come up with that on our own, which shows the value of working with an outside agency.”

Importantly, the new logo has also been worked into the Hilton HHonours logo, the more consumerfacing brand Hilton uses for its loyalty scheme.

This Hilton HHonours imagery and advertising will be first be seen in the UK venues and on the Honours loyalty cards this month, as Hilton launches a 50% off promotion across its venues.

It is clear that Hilton CEO Chris Nassetta has been very hands on throughout the rebranding process. Lehmann says: “Hilton is not an organisation that says, ‘Go away and come up some ideas and we’ll choose one.’ They are very creative. Once, Chris Nassetta called me in my office twice in one morning, to talk about identity. The first call, he said, ‘Go get today’s Wall Street Journal and call me back’. Which I did. Then we had a great conversation about design, branding, identity, standout corporate identities, what made strategic sense for Hilton Worldwide. That kind of passion and availability is rare and admirable in a CEO of a global organisation. Same for Paul Brown, who would look at work we sent via email and craft a very detailed, spot-on reply, and almost immediately after getting it. That’s pretty amazing.”

The new logo and branding is currently being rolled out in the trade and with travel agents and other business customers and partners. There will be no change to signage or exterior of hotels which retain their own individual branding, although the corporate brand will be used on the headquarters building, on business cards, corporate communications, on the website and also as part of the Hilton HHonours loyalty scheme, which works across all the Hilton brands.

Landor also helped create a video to unveil and explain the new branding to Hilton’s 135,000 employees. Lehmann says there is more to come, as the next step is to look at the corporate tone of voice in branding and communications and that this will look to reflect the same core values.

The reaction, says Brown, has been good so far: “Most of it is anecdotal, it’s early days, but we will do some research. I spoken to the hotel owners and the travel agents and employees who all love it, especially that we created a new name that also emphasises the part of the business outside the US.”

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