Shade Hotel Redondo Beach, located on the King Harbor waterfront, is a warm, contemporary boutique hotel, delighting guests with upscale hospitality and stunning harbor sunset views, while carrying on the excellence of its older sister hotel, Shade Manhattan Beach, voted by Condé Nast Traveler as the #6 reason to visit Los Angeles.
Both properties feature signature rooms and suites offering exclusive furnishings and amenities in a spa-like environment.
For a luxury establishment, laundry can account for 16% of a hotel’s water usage which can take its toll on the environment. Shade thought about how they could service their guests and also support the environment. Enter Plant With Purpose, a 501(c)(3) non-profit whose mission is to reverse deforestation and poverty around the world through planting trees and teaching sustainable techniques to impoverished farming families. Shade partnered with Plant with Purpose on a new program that not only reduced water waste for the hotels, but actually helped communities in need. Every day a guest elects to forgo housekeeping, a tree is planted in their honor.
Our role began by coming up with a way to co-brand the project that made sense to both parties. The tagline we developed was the perfect solution to do just that.
“Trees give shade. Shade gives trees.”
Next on our agenda, was to design the best way to communicate this message that remained on-brand. We did that by using a wood material instead of the traditional paper or plastic door hanger, and accompanying it with a stand-up tent card that explained the program to guests in more detail.
Each custom wood door hanger features a clear and simple message to alert hotel staff that the guest would like to forgo housekeeping that day. We also hoped by placing that hanger on the outside of their doors, guests would feel the pride of contributing to the environment on a global scale.
The last piece of marketing was the design of an email blast that could communicate with guests a month or two after their stay to let them know the number of trees that they and other guests participated in planting during that period.
Since 1984, Plant With Purpose has planted 21 million trees and their core programs have helped families to increase farm yields, heal damaged ecosystems, improve nutrition, increase household savings, and provide greater economic opportunity. From a humanitarian and conservation standpoint, Plant with Purpose was a wonderful organization to partner up with.
The Shade+Trees mission was indeed a passion project. We helped Shade reimagine a good idea and pushed it one step further. Branding lessons aside, it simply felt good to be able to contribute positively to our environment and help people in need.
