The Watermark Hotel

Being part of the creative and strategic process from the beginning is one of Red Thinking’s favorite things to do. For The Watermark Hotel, a new hotel with 300 luxury suites in Tysons, VA, it was all about showing that this hotel experience and this brand are truly like no other.

Approachable elegance was the name of the game from the start with The Watermark’s branding, which included everything from a moodboard, designed to establish the brand’s identity, to in-house signage, carefully crafted to set the just-right tone for guests, to coffee cups, featuring quirky caffeine-centric phrases to surprise and delight guests in even the smallest details.

The use of neutrals in The Watermark’s branding was intentionally minimal. We developed an expanded brand color palette that appropriately elevated The Watermark’s existing logo to ensure the branding truly stood out in every use case. The Watermark’s brand’s palette was built around bright and vibrant blue and teal tones, added as a nod to both the mention of “water” in the hotel’s name and to the Capitol One Center in which the hotel sits. The graphic style married modernity with sophistication, using lines and textures to keep all creative bold, interesting, and always eye-catching.

The Watermark Hotel brand is all about taking the traditional hotel experience and turning it on its head in the best way, so the branding had to match. Red Thinking focused on bringing elements of the physical space into the creative collateral to establish a cohesive style that not only evokes the same feelings that the building itself inspires, but continues it. This strategy guarantees that anyone who interacts with the brand will immediately grasp the profoundly unique experience of The Watermark Hotel. There are gold and brass accents throughout the hotel which inspired us to incorporate gold pops into the branding. Gold diagonal lines and triangle shapes function as brackets in the creative, giving a sense of being enveloped by sophistication, while echoing the diagonal lockup in The Watermark logo.

“Shay, owner of Red Thinking has assembled a powerful, cohesive team of experts in branding, content, digital, website, SEO. This team quickly becomes fully immersed and invested in any project they are working on. They are able to think and work like true business owners and provide feedback that goes beyond Marketing. There are no egos across the team and they never try and push their own agenda. They want the team to feel invested and are committed to ensuring the team feels proud of the final product. They are flexible hard working and extremely organized.  They are the best at what they do.”

– Stephanie Snapkoski, Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Revenue Management

The design of the Watermark’s branding, just like the space itself, offers an entirely unique appeal. Just like the “secret” watermark in the logo, nothing is expected, and that makes it even better. It’s truly #LikeNoOther