Bang & Olufsen

The design reputation of Bang & Olufsen is unquestioned. Its products, and the brand itself, have lived at the highest levels of taste since their inception in 1925. Gaining approval to produce work on their behalf meant a rigorous vetting process, one we were more than happy to oblige. Once approved, we had the opportunity to help them unlock a market that had been an enigma for them.

As the maker of some of the most coveted audio and video electronics in the world, B&O had built a thriving hospitality business through full-facility installations in boutique hotels across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. The Americas, however, were a different story: a market far less familiar with the Danish brand, and skeptical of the investment return on its proprietary systems.

We began by untangling nearly a dozen overlapping stakeholder roles—architects, interior designers, technology integrators, hotel ownership groups, B&O’s own regional teams—each with a different relationship to the project and a different reason to care. We reorganized that ecosystem into three clear interest areas: Business, Design, and Technology, paired with sharpened positioning and a new messaging framework that gave everyone in the system a clear, common language.

Next, we recommended something outside the original scope: a password-protected, web-based hub for Bang & Olufsen Hospitality Americas. This was 2008, and building a custom-coded stakeholder portal—one that worked as a sales brochure early in a project and a living project hub later, holding everything from blueprints to contracts—put the site years ahead of where web and interaction design were headed. The three-part matrix that had reorganized the partner ecosystem became the site’s own architecture: Management, Design, and Technology, rendered in the interlocking red, green, and blue of an RGB circle.

Shortly after launch, The Mark Hotel in New York City signed on as Bang & Olufsen Hospitality’s first full-installation hotel customer in the Americas, followed by Hotel Beaux Arts in Miami. The market that had been an enigma for so long had finally opened.