Stick a middle finger up at the established hotels, celebrate the guest, cultivate a strong audience, use traditional media in untraditional ways, try many things, see what works. Use hotel openings – 38 of them – to build the brand. In person, at events, in advertising, on social, in activations, in the hotel. Here is a look at 15+ years of work from city to city. Also see the brand work here and building exhibitions here, for other ways to communicate. Or go to citizenM.com, book a hotel far away, and go on holiday. Send a postcard.
A film to launch citizenM’s first US hotel, in New York’s Times Square, made with stop motion king, Pes, and currently at 10 million views on youtube. Brutal swan deaths, evidently, attract an audience.
Various ads for London and US launches. The Marriott Group, ironically, were the ones to buy the citizenM brand in 2025, so not a million miles away.Just $400 million closer.
An A to Z of London, to launch two new hotels, with a wry, knowing look at what we really love about modern London – nail bars and chicken shops over towers and palaces. A series of animations, made with Animade, and appearing as a website, (still available here), hotel hoarding and various creative sites from It’s Nice That to Creative Review.)
Actions, made for social, and a growing citizenM fanbase, taking both a challenger tone and a more welcoming, positive outlook to counter the more cynical age when Trump came to the White House.
The nascent technology of Runway was used to, again, poke a finger at the traditional luxury establishments. This film was made a couple of years ago but feels a thousand more.
As a precursor to the window exhibitions, we worked with locals around the Tower of London hotel to create a series of royal portraits using objects from the just opened hotel. These portraits appeared in an exhibition in Tower Hill tube station ad spaces, giving a right royal welcome to commuters and tourists.
This US-wide awareness campaign was accompanied by a building exhibition in Washington DC (see here) and a broad digital first series of ads, as well as podcast radio, Wetransfer takeovers, with photography by Amber Pinkerton where ‘citizens’ are shot both from a pillow’s and a birds point of view. In other words looking up and looking down on the sleeping cast in all their weird and wonderful snoozing positions.
Not everything is an ad. Sometimes it’s an inflatable bucking bronco bed. We launched the Austin hotel during SXSW, when the city swells with music, tech, and creative professionals. The challenge? Stay on the bucking bed for 30 seconds, and win a stay at any citizenM hotel in the world. It made the new – local and international – and racked up more likes on SXSW’s Instagram than Ryan Gosling. Downside? If the bronco controller was having a bad day, a ride might’ve threatened to put your back out.
Miami opening campaign took Florida’s Sunshine State moniker and turned it into the theme of ‘sunshine state of mind’, visualised through sun-developed cyanotypes and displayed in colder states like New York (with Miami temperatures to tempt you further) and on coastal ferries cruising down South Beach.
Italy wide campaign of digitally enhanced revolving busts to promote the new Rome hotel of citizenM, accompanied by some fairly rudimentary rehashing of the little latin I know. Also, an activation involving a plinth and some willing tourists & locals, as well as a sample of one of the teaser animations for socials.
