Le Meridien Builds a Brand Message With Pastries and Music

Le Meridien Hotels and Resorts is in the midst of a $6 million rebranding campaign entitled “Destination Unlocked,” which launched in June in an effort to better define the brand and align it with the culture and cuisine surrounding each of its properties.

Today the hotel group released the latest media from its Eclair Diaries, one piece of the larger campaign, celebrating items made with local products at each of the brand’s properties.

The video follows pastry chef Johnny Iuzzini traveling through Cote d’Azur in search of ingredients to create a special eclair for the local Le Meridien property. This is the second video in the series, following one in San Francisco.

A Starwood brand, Le Meridien is creating eight videos that follow Iuzzini as he visits local farmers’ markets, coffee shops, distilleries and bakeries in each of these destinations, searching for the local taste that is then folded into the pastry.

The partnership also introduces the Le Meridien brand to Iuzzini’s sizable social media following, which has already proven to be interested in discovering new destinations, trying new foods and, of course, his endeavors.

“Our signature eclair program is one touch point of the new Le Meridien experience. It delivers on our promise to unlock the destination for our guests through culinary creations,” Le Meridien global brand leader Brian Povinelli says.

Le Meridien tracks the engagement of the films through engagement on its social channels including views, shares, emotional sentiment and traffic that’s driven to its other digital properties.

Eclairs are just one part of the Le Meridien branding campaign.

The brand also worked with the band Nouvelle Vague to create a 24-hour soundtrack for each of its hotel lobbies and produced videos of the band members traveling to play concerts in different Le Meridien destinations.

“If the content is rich enough and dramatic enough, people will take that and curate it into their own travel experience in a personalized way,” Jeremy Hollister, founder of the independent creative agency Plus that created both sets of videos, recently told Skift.

Watch the first two videos, from San Francisco and Cote d’Azur, below: