Fuelling a RED Revolution

Carlson Rezidor had a new concept in mind for the hotel industry, a brand that was going to grab the sector by the scruff of the neck, spray its hair red and scream that tattoos are always cool! The newest addition to their portfolio, Radisson Red, is heavily influenced by the music, fashion and art scenes and is aimed at a customer base with a free thinking, tech-savvy mind-set rather than a traditional ol’ marketing demographic. At their heart they’re comfortable, accessible, ultra-stylish hotels but Carlson Rezidor want staying at a RED hotel to be an experience, something more akin to an art gallery social media rock gig! Taking that thinking as our lead, we directed every aspect of the development of the brand from strategic workshops that defined the audience as the ‘Ageless Millennial’, which in turn informed the direction of a visual brand that can rather proudly be described as ‘in your face’. The first challenge… How do you market a hotel brand that didn’t actually have any hotels yet? (the first is due to open 18th April, 2016) RED is a visual, tech-driven brand, so social media and blogging were the only places to be for the majority of the pre-launch marketing. We created highly targeted social content and interest pieces that played to the audience demographic and deployed them across a variety of platforms. The resulting engagement and awareness figures were pretty huge, even by our expectations and will only continue to grow as more hotels are added. RED is already, by any measure, the most socially engaged brand of the whole Carlson Rezidor portfolio.