What makes an exciting hospitality brand?

Hospitality brand

Having a stand-out brand can boost business significantly, turning one-off customers into returning visitors and growing reputation. One of the hospitality venues that has turned itself into a popular venue with a loyal customer base, is Bounce.

Modern Hospitality spoke with innovative creator and operator of technology-enabled leisure concepts, State of Play Hospitality, about its rebranding of its renowned Bounce concept and how to create an exciting and memorable hospitality brand.

Bounce has impressed customers since it launched in Farringdon in 2012, before opening a second site in Old Street in 2015. The brand has mastered hospitality, becoming a popular destination known as ‘the home of ping pong.’

State of Play’s new rebrand of Bounce includes a fresh new logo, new website and electric new energy, designed to capture the vibrancy of the brand. As part of this, they will also be launching the Big Bounce Back campaign, paying homage to a new decade, starting with the 90’s. This will include music, food and limited-edition cocktails, designed to delight customers.

Bounce - hospitality brand success

Here’s what Lesley Mcilroy, Marketing Director UK of State of Play Hospitality, had to say:

1.       How important is a re-brand to reinvigorate a hospitality brand and attract new customers?

It is super important to keep innovating throughout a brand’s lifespan as both new and existing customers like to see brands that keep ahead of the curve and evolve and adapt to the outside world. Bounce has been around for nearly 10 years and has grown in number of sites and product offering. In terms of our offering, we are working on the next generation of Wonderball, our proprietary digital gaming platform and we also recently added Shuffleboard to our mix of activities.

In terms of the re-brand, the design and digital representation of Bounce needed an injection of vibrancy but our core values and USPs remain the same. 

2.       What are the major aspects of a successful hospitality brand?

Really understanding your customer base and why they come to you. We started the rebrand by writing the Bounce DNA which focused on extracting our USPs, our brand personality and when and why customers visit us. We have used survey information from our loyal guests to ensure we captured what Bounce is to them. We then ensured that throughout the design phases the DNA was kept at the heart of what we did. 

Bounce ping pong branding for bars and  businesses

3.       What inspired Bounce’s re-brand?

We really wanted to capture the fun, excitement and movement that happens in our venues in our design. Representing the experience of Bounce in our website and digital channels was really a key element of what we wanted to achieve and I believe we have succeeded in that. 

4.       What can visitors expect as part of the Big Bounce Back campaign and how can themes work to grow loyalty and customer engagement?

When we sent our database an email to tell us what they would most love to see at Bounce they said 90’s themed events were at the top of the list for them so the Big Bounce Back will be paying homage to this favoured era. Think themed cocktails with fun merchandise, bottomless brunches, throwback games, cocktail making and much more.

5.       Bounce has created a new website – what are the main changes and what’s the reasoning behind this?

We really wanted anyone who landed on our website to get a sense of the hospitality brand, even if they hadn’t yet visited any of the venues. We have achieved that through animation, the whole website moves in a fun and exciting way which is what happens when you chase a ping pong ball round a table in our venues. We wanted to make the information super easy to find and clear to read and of course enable customers to book whatever they are looking for, whether that is a birthday party with friends or a corporate conference with 200 colleagues.