Lifestyle Brands Are Building Hotels Now. Here’s Why That Actually Makes Sense.

These days, it seems, every brand wants to be a “lifestyle brand.”

Peddling burritos? “Our ultimate marketing mission is to make Chipotle not just a food brand but a purpose-driven lifestyle brand,” the company’s new head of marketing said. Selling sweets? Godiva wants “to be seen as a lifestyle brand by leveraging [our] culinary experience to expand beyond chocolates,” a statement read. Shipping meal-preparation kits to families? Blue Apron, its new CEO argued, sees itself as “a strong consumer lifestyle brand that [plays]…a more meaningful role in our customers’ lives.”

All three examples appeared in a recent article in the New York Times, which both chronicled and raised a skeptical eyebrow about the commitment of so many brands, in some pretty prosaic industries, to becoming lifestyle brands. What the Times (and, I fear, many of the brands themselves) could not quite identity were how to turn these aims into action. Chipotle is running ads on water-cooler shows and sponsoring Fortnite players, the article noted. Blue Apron has experimented with “cooking classes, movie screenings, and chef panels” in cool cities. Godiva “would like people to stop in one of its shops for coffee in the morning and a snack in the afternoon.”

Surely marketers with big dreams can come up with bolder real-world strategies than these. So allow me to suggest one radical idea: If you want to build a lifestyle brand, no matter the industry you’re in, consider building a hotel. After all, what more visceral, intimate way is there for you to articulate and communicate the lifestyle attributes of your brand than to invite customers to live in a space that reflects those attributes?

I first encountered this idea several years ago, when I was on a speaking tour in Germany. It was a Friday in Berlin, I was exhausted, so I decided to spend the night rather than trudge on to the next city. I asked a colleague to recommend a place to stay, and he suggested the Casa Camper Berlin. “Camper?” I asked. “Like the shoes?” It seems the innovative footwear company, based in Spain, decided that one way to deepen ties to its fashion-conscious customers was to build hotels, first in Barcelona, then in Berlin, whose look and experience would echo the brand’s attributes. “Everything from the rooms to the halls, terrace, bar and lobby were designed with the Camper look in mind,” one reviewer noted. I didn’t get a room (the hotel was sold out), but I got an interesting lesson in marketing.

Fast forward to last year, when I was part of a conference on how brands could contend with the commoditizing impact of Amazon and other internet retailers. One of the buzzy topics was the move by West Elm, the style-minded home furnishings company, to open a collection of boutique hotels in U.S. cities such as Indianapolis; Minneapolis; Savannah, Georgia; and Portland, Maine. The hotels (outfitted, naturally, with the company’s products) are “focused on achieving consistency of the West Elm aesthetic,” a company executive explained to an industry magazine. “We want the experience of walking into a West Elm hotel to evoke a similar feeling of walking into a West Elm store — but have the opportunity to extend this.”

Meanwhile, just last week I was on a trip to Detroit, whose much-heralded downtown renaissance has been accompanied by the launch of a bunch of boutique hotels. One of the most anticipated offerings, scheduled to open later this fall, is the Shinola Hotel, owned by the Detroit-based maker of watches, bicycles, backpacks, and other consumer items. Shinola has retail stores across the country for its products. But this hotel, which will anchor a complex of residences, restaurants, and shops, is meant to showcase the Shinola brand and the Detroit spirit on which it is based. “In the shift from a retail/consumer products brand to a lifestyle and 360-degree design brand,” one analysis noted, “the Shinola Hotel is paying as much attention to detail as its artisans pay to its timepieces and other items.”

Am I really suggesting that if you are selling burritos, chocolates, or some other familiar consumer item, the way to turn your product brand into a lifestyle brand is to open a hotel? Well, maybe. But at the very least, if you are serious about making deep, emotional, enduring connections with customers, your marketing strategies have to be more daring and far-reaching than ever before. That’s why it’s worth checking into (figuratively, and perhaps even literally) these newfangled hotels. These days, if you want customers to pay attention to your brand, you’ve got to do things that are worth paying attention to.