Brand Leadership Magazine  ·  Case 04 – Reseguiden.se

A Brand Journey
with the Management Team

Interview with Michael Blaxland, CEO, Reseguiden.se

Reseguiden.se, the Nordic region's leading travel comparison site, operates in an industry where developments — including in social media — are moving at a ferocious pace. To secure the company's long-term market position, CEO Michael Blaxland initiated a brand process with his management team.

Social media as everyday business

Many of the questions about social media that business leaders in other industries are still pondering are simply daily reality for Reseguiden.se. From the very beginning, the company has exploited the commercial power that can be generated by establishing social networks and user communities on the internet. Through an effective search engine and the creation of "the Forum" — a space on the site where visitors can share their travel experiences, recommend sights and attractions, offer advice, and chat with other members — Reseguiden.se has succeeded in attracting 1.5 million unique visitors per month. Having a direct dialogue with visitors, while also stimulating dialogue between users via Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, is a matter of course for a company whose entire business exists online.

But to withstand increasingly fierce competition, management felt the need to update and concretise their picture of what the Reseguiden.se brand should stand for.

– When we launched Reseguiden.se we were pioneers in many ways. The internet was in its infancy and people's willingness to buy online was low. At the same time it was easier to experiment back then. Today the industry and customers have matured considerably, the market has developed technically and more players have entered and staked out clear positions. We have continuously developed our business, but we had never taken a holistic look at our brand, explains Michael Blaxland. Who is Reseguiden.se, really? What do we stand for, and why should customers visit our site — and why should they come back? What values do we add for our visitors? We thought a great deal about these questions, both in management and in our board. To search for the answers we initiated a brand process with the goal of developing a brand strategy that management could share, and that the organisation could use as a source of inspiration to continue developing Reseguiden.se together.

Different starting points

For the strategic perspective to be as overarching and business-driving as possible, it is an advantage if ultimate responsibility for the brand sits with the CEO. The advantage is that they have the executive power and the symbolically most influential position to give the issue the right level of importance. The CEO who does this successfully can use the brand strategy as a strategic tool to develop the company's culture and strengthen its ability to compete.

For many entrepreneurs and business leaders, a lack of time is an obstacle to discussing long-term questions and strategic development. Another obstacle is the often fragmented understanding within the management team of what a brand strategy actually is and what it aims to achieve.

– We were all agreed on why we needed to undertake a brand process, but I think expectations of the brand process varied considerably within the group, says Michael Blaxland. That is why it is important that a process like this is given some time. There needs to be space for discussions that help everyone calibrate their understanding of how business-critical the brand strategy is and how we as a management team can work together on these questions. The marketing manager is usually the one most accustomed to discussing things in brand terms, and is perhaps the one who most easily sees all the dimensions of strategic brand work. The CEO may have a different view, and HR and the finance manager may have yet another, says Michael Blaxland. What matters is allowing all perspectives on the question to come to the surface. It must not become a trench war where different professional languages based on participants' areas of responsibility muddy the discussion and obstruct the strategic process.

A clear identity

Reseguiden.se was one of the first players to launch a travel comparison site and has over time built up a leading position on the Swedish market. They therefore know what it takes to establish themselves in a business environment where global competition is immediate. New players constantly appear and new technical and commercial solutions are launched continuously, pushing the boundaries of what is possible. What is a successful position one day can prove to be outdated and outcompeted the next.

Competition comes from different directions — from global players such as Kayak and Expedia, but also from the travel operators themselves and from smaller niche players offering narrow search services for everything from available flight seats to last-minute trips or travel to specific destinations.

– We naturally keep a close eye on what is happening among our current and potential future competitors, but over the years we have learned that we need to focus on developing our own identity and our own offerings, and not get swept along and change strategy every time something new appears, explains Michael Blaxland.

Another example of the intensifying competition is Google, which in 2010 announced its acquisition of ITA for 700 million dollars in cash. ITA is a Boston-based company that specialises in organising information within the aviation industry — including flight times, prices and availability. The information is used today by the majority of players offering various types of travel search services. Google hoped to develop the category and offer more innovative and effective search services. The industry, which views the globally dominant search site as a threat, reacted strongly to the announcement, and the matter was referred to the competition authorities in the US for review.

The strategy process

The strategy work was preceded by a phase of information gathering and analysis. To obtain as complete a foundation as possible for the strategic discussions, an analysis was first carried out of the most significant trends affecting customer needs and the general development of the industry. A few months before the brand work began, the management team had also initiated a target audience analysis. Based on this analysis, users were divided into four segments based on their needs, purchasing behaviour and digital maturity.

In the next step, a competitor mapping was carried out from a visual and brand-strategic perspective, and finally all available material was compiled into a current state report. The current state report also included a compilation of individual interviews conducted with members of the management team. Using the current state report as a foundation, a development phase followed in which the future brand strategy was developed together with the management team across four workshops spread over eight weeks.

– To give the management team the opportunity to reflect between each workshop, we thought it wise to spread the process out over a few months. In this way we in the management team could discuss the questions in our day-to-day work, but also with our other colleagues between each workshop. This meant we brought more insight to each new workshop, says Michael Blaxland.

The agreed strategy

Reseguiden's business model is built on generating revenue from traffic sent from the site to the travel operators, airlines and hotels that the search engine identifies as the best options for each specific search. Another revenue source is advertising on the site itself and the distribution of content to other media players who write about travel. Since the fundamental condition for generating revenue is based on the number of visitors to Reseguiden.se — and since this in turn depends on the value visitors perceive the site's content to have — the management team decided to develop the brand identity around the meaning of the company's name: "Reseguide" (Travel Guide).

The reason for the decision was the insight that "Travel Guide" is actually a concept that can be used strategically, since it both personifies the identity and also clarifies the brand's values and qualities — such as helpfulness, inspiration and travel expertise.

"If your brand owns the relationship with the traveller, you also become attractive to other partners."

— Michael Blaxland, CEO, Reseguiden.se

– It may sound very obvious when you explain it in hindsight, but if you never take the time to stop and reflect on the value that can lie hidden in things taken for granted, you never get the opportunity to develop that value either. By using the concept of "guide" as a starting point for communicating our personality, values, promises and desired position — which we had developed in our workshops — we arrived at a platform that our management team could agree on and saw development potential in. Furthermore, it was very easy to communicate the platform internally. We can actually conclude that the name Reseguiden.se was slightly ahead of its time, but that we now have an obvious role to play in the market, says Michael Blaxland. The internet has certainly created fantastic opportunities for customers to compare travel options themselves, but the many players in the market have also contributed to search results that are difficult to navigate — meaning customers in many cases struggle to orientate themselves and make decisions. Because even though Google and Expedia are large and well known, a large part of the market is driven by customers' need for security, closeness and specific knowledge that only a locally present partner can offer, says Michael Blaxland.

Continued development

Once the brand strategy was complete, the internal development work began. The first step in embedding it internally was carried out at the company's annual kick-off, after which development of the site itself and other touchpoints with the outside world continued. Drawing on the content of the brand strategy, the site was given a more modern visual identity with more images and clearer, simpler navigation.

But the major change was elevating the members and the Forum even further, and toning down the in-house editorial content. Based on the concept of "Guide" and "Travel Guide", the content and members' roles on the site were restructured.

– Naturally the site plays an enormously central role in how our brand is perceived by our target groups, which is why that is where the biggest changes were made. On the site and in the Forum, a deeper relationship is created with our target group — and with it the foundation for loyalty to the Reseguiden.se brand, says Michael Blaxland. Since it is the dialogue and exchange of knowledge, experience and the relationship between our visitors that are the brand's soul and most valuable assets — and also what generates traffic to the site — we wanted to give this even more space. By presenting our members as "guides" and encouraging them to write their own "travel guides" about places they have visited, we improve both the content on the site and build stronger relationships between us and our users, but also between users themselves. If your brand owns the relationship with the traveller, you also become attractive to other partners. Elevating our members further also strengthens our position as an independent player. "Independent" is an important keyword in our brand platform. Now everything hangs together and different parts support each other to ultimately create a better travel experience, concludes Michael Blaxland.

About the Company

Reseguiden is Sweden’s leading comparison site for comparing and booking travel. Every month, millions of travelers are helped to find the right trip at the right price. This is achieved by compiling a wide range of travel options from more than 500 travel agencies, tour operators, airlines, hotels, and more. The company was founded in 1998 and today operates in Sweden and Norway.