Branding
Design
Guest Experience
Digital Marketing

The Brief

Kuma Lodge is owned by three Australian partners and is located in Madarao, a quaint, authentic Japanese. Our brief was to build a fun and contemporary brand that would connect with a western audience in a traditional ski village without losing the charm that the larger ski resorts often lack.

We worked closely with the team to transform their brand, marketing and customer experience – achieving some amazing results - and helping them grow their business from one lodge to three.

Step 1. Defining their Audience

Before we looked at building a brand we needed to define who we were talking to, and essentially who the perfect guest would be. The team at Kuma had thankfully done a lot of their own research to find a gap in the market. They found that there was nothing else in the village that was suitable for young families or couples from Western countries. They also knew their market would be passionate about world-class snow conditions, but wanted to discover authentic local culture away from the overrun ski resorts in the north of the country.

Step 2. Defining the brand strategy

We started the creative process by asking the team at Kuma some simple questions that would help us better understand their brand purpose. Their answers would also inform our decisions on the brand, marketing and guest experience and set them apart from their competition.

What are your business goals?
“To build brand awareness and attract new guests to our ski lodge in Japan.”

Who is your target audience?
“Young families and couples who love to ski and share together in the experiences of a different local culture. Predominantly from Australia, Europe and America.”

What feature do you want to highlight?
“From the ski lodge you can see the kids area and directly access the beginners lifts. There is an abundance of great restaurants, bars and cafes within an easy walk.”

What is special about your brand and product?
“Our lodge is in the heart of a traditional ski village, but has all the creature comforts of the Western world.”

What other activities and attractions will most likely appeal to your guests?
“Plenty of transport, restaurants and array of après-ski and family-friendly activities.”

Once we understood the brand purpose we were able to write a branding brief with the team at Kuma before any creative work commenced.

From the branding brief we were able to establish a value proposition that would differentiate us from the competition. We didn’t want to lose the beautiful local Japanese culture that the ski village of Mt Madarao offers. What makes the village so special is the old-world charm mixed with some of the best skiing conditions you’ll find around the world. However, the owners of Kuma had invested a lot of money to bring the lodge up to Western standards. This was also a unique selling point in the village as other accommodation on offer was catering to the Japanese market.

The value proposition became "the place that offers world class skiing and local Japanese culture with Western creature comforts that has to be experienced to be believed". 

The next step was to visualise the value proposition. As part of the creative process we used mood boards and rough computer-generated visuals to present to the team at Kuma for their input and approval. 

All good ideas usually happen on paper (not the computer). So at this stage of conceptualising, it's important to pick up a pen, not a mouse.

Step 3. Building the brand

It was now time to establish a brand identity that was unique to the lodge and delivered on the value proposition. 

When the team at Kuma bought the lodge it was called 'Andersen Lodge'. We discussed a name change at length and decided to find something more relevant and appealing to our audience. 

Kuma is the Japanese word for ‘bear’. There are local bears in the area so it was relevant and it had an internationally friendly sounding name without losing any Japanese heritage. Most importantly, the creative and design felt like they could bring the bear to life in the form of a cheeky character. This would work perfectly to help establish the tone of fun, quirky and approachable.

When developing the branding we looked at ways of incorporating katakana, a component of the Japanese writing system with a stylised and Japanese-inspired illustrative 'Kuma' graphic device.

The final logo was developed to be flexible and can be applied in a number of different forms (2D and 3D), to best represent the channel and tone we need.

The brand extends into Kuma's marketing and social strategies by maintaining a fun, playful and at times cheeky tone of voice. It was imperative that we maintained a level of consistency with the messaging and visuals to avoid guests being misled or confused along their buyer journey.

When posting social content we suggested Later which is a great tool for scheduling and planning. Kuma also uses CrowdFire to search and post relevant content as part of their social strategy.

Sharing it with the world

Most of your guests will conduct research into where they want to stay. Video is an extremely effective platform to deliver information to them at scale and it almost doubles the chance of them making a booking with you. According to YouTube, mobile video consumption grows by 100% every single year. With staggering growth such as this, video marketing is a channel that can’t be ignored.

Check out the video the team at Hotelr created for Kuma.

Key Results

• 200% year-on-year direct booking revenue growth since 2016

• Kuma Lodge is ranked #1 on TripAdvisor for the area

• 351% increase in audience engagement on social media (shares, likes and comments)

• The guest experience continuously delivers 5 star reviews

We developed a clever design identity and system based off Kuma (Japanese word for 'bear' which are local to the area) which could extend through their marketing and content plans and entire guest experience.

We’d love to work with you. Get in touch today.