What makes a perfect partnership?

This blog has been woefully neglected, so to get over my bloggers’ block I’ve decided to follow received wisdom and write about something I know (and love). And that is building creative brand collaborations, one of my favourite facets of marketing.

You could easily write a whole series of blogs about marketing partnerships and how they can work both commercially and in terms of brand building, about how they are evolving and about some of the potential pitfalls. But I’m going to focus on one particular aspect and that is the storytelling, because I honestly think that having a strong story is the key to creating a memorable collaboration.

Soon after I arrived at The Savoy, I took a call from Gucci. It was coming up to their centenary and they wanted to treat some of their loyal customers to afternoon tea or cocktails at The Savoy. The reason they chose The Savoy in particular was because the founder of the fashion house, Guccio Gucci himself, had worked at the hotel as a lift boy and luggage porter in his youth. A call like that is an absolute gift to a marketer like me and I literally skipped to a meeting with the senior leadership team to tell them the news. Not because they were going to get the revenue from a few extra afternoon teas, but because after I’d suggested we have a much wider conversation about how we could be creative together, and Gucci had agreed to talk about a marketing collaboration.

Cutting a long story short, as we emerged from the pandemic, The Royal Suite by Gucci was launched, a completely new look for the flagship suite at the hotel. Adorned with the rich maximalism of the then creative director, Alessandro Michele, it was full of plants and featured wonderfully creative technology that brought natural motifs alive. The theme for the suite was regeneration, a word and a concept which is now often mentioned, but three years ago still felt new. The idea was that both nature and travel are regenerative, that they give you something, a burst of energy, a fresh perspective.

The reason this collaboration did so well, both in generating buzz across the media and commercially, was not just because two well-known brands joined forces, but because they took their shared histories and created something new. Something that was not just luxurious, but innovative and fun too. Hats off to Gucci for bringing in the tech side of things because that really showed how up to date our two heritage brands were. And the strength of the story and our shared willingness to be creative meant that the partnership could continue to grow, with a launch the Savoy Line of Gucci luggage and a Gucci ‘Valigeria’ boutique within the heart of the hotel following on.

It's honestly rare that you can create or come across partnerships that have that strong a story, that just make such perfect sense. Sometimes you have to write it from scratch. But new stories can be beautiful too. At the moment I’m working on partnerships that join beautiful sustainable brands together, that blend new and old and that will both respond to an operational need as well as provide the guest with pleasure. It’s exciting. Watch this space!