Creative work in hospitality is expensive to be wrong about. A rebrand touches every sign, uniform and booking screen. A new concept identity shapes years of trading. Yet the approval conversation is often the least rigorous meeting in the building: opinions about colours, delivered by the most senior person in the room.
Why taste is the wrong instrument
Taste varies, and taste is not the point. The point is whether the work will change a commercial outcome: rate, covers, direct share, recall, willingness to recommend. Strong creative work can look uncomfortable in a boardroom and perform brilliantly in a market. Safe work can pass every internal review and disappear on contact with the public. You need a test that measures the work, not the room.
The five questions
- Would our target guest describe us this way unprompted? If the work expresses something guests already half-believe, it will compound. If it asserts something no guest would recognise, you are buying an education campaign whether you budgeted for one or not.
- Could a competitor present this identical work tomorrow? Swap your logo for theirs. If the idea still holds, it was never yours. Distinctiveness is not decoration; it is the entire commercial function of brand.
- Does it survive the worst surface? Not the launch film. The booking confirmation email, the parking sign, the third-party listing thumbnail. Hospitality brands live on their least glamorous touchpoints, so test the work there first.
- What number do we expect it to move, and by when? The answer can be modest and the horizon can be long, but there must be an answer. Work with no intended commercial effect is a donation to the design industry.
- Are we rejecting it because it is wrong, or because it is new? This is the question the chair should ask last. Discomfort is data, but it points in both directions. Some work fails because it misreads the market. Some only fails to resemble what the room already knew.
Running the test
Put the five questions on the agenda before the work is shown, so everyone knows the basis of the decision. Take opinions on the questions, not on the palette. The meeting gets shorter, the approvals get braver, and the work that ships gets both more distinctive and more accountable, which is the combination that actually pays.
If you only remember three things
Judge effect, not aesthetics. The work exists to move a number.
Swap the logo. If a competitor could run it, it is not a brand, it is wallpaper.
Test the worst surface. Brands live on booking emails and parking signs, not launch films.
This test is how we review creative work with clients before a riyal, dirham or dollar of production is committed. If you have work on the table and the room cannot decide, bring the work and we will bring the questions. Start a conversation.