Building a brand like the Four Seasons
Building a brand like the Four Seasons
Bavel is my favorite restaurant in LA. Rather than just serving your food, the staff tells you how to eat each dish—so you can get the most out of it.
Breaking off the prawn’s head and filling it with tzatziki sauce is a little crazy; it’s unexpected, and that’s part of what makes it so memorable.
Sure it tastes amazing, but how it’s experienced is what really stands out.
After 10+ years in client services, I think the same lesson applies to the agency business.
Good work is no longer good enough. Clients want to feel taken care of, especially when they pay top dollar.
But what does taken care of really mean? And how much does experience really matter?
Danny Meyer is widely considered to be the godfather of modern hospitality. His business philosophy outlined in his book “Setting the Table” centers around the emotional benefits of hospitality, specifically around how it makes someone feel.
Reading his book, three of his insights in particular jumped off the page:
“Virtually nothing else is as important as how one is made to feel in any business transaction.”
“Service is the technical delivery of a product. Hospitality is how the delivery of that product makes its recipient feel.”
“Hospitality exists when you believe the other person is on your side.”
All of this has me wondering, is there a world where Meyer’s “Enlightened Hospitality” philosophy can be just as effective in a studio setting as a fine dining restaurant?
Good work is table stakes; it alone is not enough to succeed in today's competitive environment. Something more memorable is required—an experience that delights clients, gives them conviction around where to take their business, & makes them feel like you're on their side.
The following roadmap is my working theory for how to deliver a memorable experience; one that shines just as much as the work.
I wrote it as a memo to myself & my eventual future team, but hopefully it's just as useful to anyone else thinking about elevating their client management game.
First impressions are everything
Most agencies view “Discovery”—the first step in the strategy & design process—as a box to check.
We see it as a way to win them over.
Winning them over starts with making potential clients feel heard.
Over the course of our initial conversations, we summarize everything we hear and play it back to ensure we’re aligned. This guarantees we’re working off the same brief, to solve the right problem, in the most cost-effective way.
Then it’s all about creating an insane amount of momentum—to show them that we’re not only capable, but care as much as them.
Back in Facebook’s early days, they figured out that if they could get new users to make 7 friends in their first 10 days on the platform, they’d be hooked for life. It was their “metric that mattered” & everything they did as a company was in service of making this happen.
Our equivalent is changing the way they see their business within a week of working together. By day 5, new clients should already be seeing new possibilities for their narrative—hyped about their investment & our newly formed partnership.
Everything else gets infinitely easier when clients start to trust you. So it's 100% worth going above and beyond to earn that trust, coming out of the gate hot.
Help them get to the answers themselves
Good partners tell clients what to do. Great partners help clients find the answers for themselves.
Most consultants get a bad rap because their deliverables are suggestions buried in a deck. Think about it: If someone told you what to do with your business how likely would you be to listen?
That’s why everything we do is designed to help clients get to the answer themselves.
We’re in the business of helping clients find extreme conviction around where to take their company. Success isn’t a hot new site or tagline—it’s when they feel enough ownership & excitement around their North Star to *literally* design their organization around it.
Our process is more of dialogue than a monologue—designed to pull your story out of you—to ensure whatever we land on epitomizes your vision (not ours).
“Service is a monologue. We decide how we want to do things and set our own standards for service. Hospitality is a dialogue. To be on the guest’s side requires listening to that person with every sense, and following up with a thoughtful, gracious, and appropriate response. It takes both great service and great hospitality to rise to the top.” — Danny Meyer
We love giving a captivating presentation as much as anyone, but our approach is more centered around working sessions—designed to challenge your thinking, provoke new possibilities, & change the way you see the opportunity.
We always go wide before deep—sharing multiple territories for where we might take your brand before doubling down—so you can move forward with confidence, knowing no stone has been left unturned.
Play for the same team
Most agencies have a different set of incentives than the clients they serve. And it’s under-talked about how these competing interests are often at the heart of agency/client drama.
That’s why we’re structuring ourselves a little differently to team up with clients for the long-haul.
Rather than take on one-off projects, we aspire to build life-long relationships with everyone we work with. “Life-long relationships” is a high bar, one that requires a new business model & more intentionality.
For example, all of our startup engagements have advisory agreements built into them—an opportunity for teams to continue getting strategic advisement long after the initial sprint (i.e. design reviews, quarterly planning, & board meeting prep).
If for whatever reason a client isn’t all-in on our partnership, they have the ability to opt-out of the agreement, no questions asked. This incentivizes us to not only do good work, but deliver on the experience.
Because meaningful equity is at stake, we operate more like a venture fund with an investment thesis than a traditional agency. We actively look to engage teams who have the ingredients meaningfully stand out & execute because we want to be known as the company who builds brands people talk about.
🛎
Taking inspiration from the hospitality industry isn't a new thing for client services businesses. Plenty talk about it, but few deliver on it like Meyer.
My bet is that any studio that delivers a strong first impression, help clients find the answers themselves, and aligns themselves with founders for the long-haul will be talked about like the Four Seasons.
For anyone reading out there, I'm curious to learn about your most memorable hospitality experiences. Tell me about the best meal you've ever had, hotel you've ever stayed at, or service you've received—and why it was so special.
Don't be shy, hit the reply button and spill the beans.
(Big thanks to Zach, Camille & Tom for reading early drafts & providing valuable feedback ❤️)