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Insights

Behind the Work → Wireless Social

Built by, for and with hospitality

Our work ends in design. But it starts in research, insight and strategy.

Research & Insight

Activities: Desk research, brand audit, digital audit, team member interviews, customer interviews.

The leading provider of WiFi to the U.K.’s hospitality sector, Wireless Social don’t lack brand awareness. They’re embedded in the market through a litany of partnerships, with a peripatetic leadership team, visible across industry conferences, and a database of 25m+ users.

Their innovative products build on the data provided in exchange for free WiFi, to help brands understand their consumers and target more like-minded people, increasing footfall and boosting revenue.

However, while Wireless Social spoke with sufficient volume to be heard, it lacked the clarity to cut through the noise.

Wireless Social has grown at pace by aligning itself with the industry; by focusing on the operator.

Hospitality is a warm, welcoming industry that favours face-to-face interaction. Few industries allow a salesman to walk through the front door, plant themselves at table 6, order a latte and request to see the GM. And succeed.

The low barrier to entry and general availability of industry leaders’ contact information results in a barrage of enquiries. Couple this with an explosion in hospitality tech over the past decade (and the infinite dashboards & reports they populate), and it’s easy to see how Wireless Social’s message could get lost in the shuffle.

It’s also a wildly urgent, operational trade. Hospitality rewards day-to-day activity and those loyal to getting things done. As a trade-off, decision-makers don’t always have time for long-term planning or the experience to convert data into insight. And even a large estate of 30+ venues might be supported by a single, freelance IT consultant.

Wireless Social has grown at pace by aligning itself with the industry; focusing on the operator; being readily available and overdelivering, and favouring sales and one-to-one relationships over consistent and considered marketing activity.

The guest-WiFi marketplace is divided into two: On one side, the behemoths; the monoliths. Sky & BT’s business divisions are sector-agnostic and support tens of thousands of operators across the country. Their model dictates that they are ‘for everyone’, deal-focused and product-over-service-led. So, by design, they’re often perceived as cold & faceless.

The other end of the market features smaller, localised vertical-specific brands that, as Wireless Social had previously endeavoured, rely on partners and a sales-led approach.

Strategy

We needed to build a confident, authoritative brand with absolute clarity of proposition, that would appeal to large, multi-site operators. And we had to marry the brand’s role as a utility – trustworthy and reliable – with its enlivening vision as an innovator and catalyst for change.

To help distinguish the brand from the likes of Sky & BT, we lent on the brand’s origins and approach, working to a motto: Wireless Social were built by, for and with hospitality.

The brand’s tone became active and straightforward, prioritising humanity & insight over technology & data. No marketing speak. Aimed at an audience with limited time and often not English-first language.

Architecturally, we devised a formation that aligns all of the brands with the guest WiFi product, just as they do technologically, using colour to differentiate an ever-growing suite; vital for a brand that continues to scale & innovate at pace.

To reduce the load on the business’ sales function and drive memorability, we also had to elevate their marketing channels, led by LinkedIn and the brand’s website.

Wireless Social needs to align itself with the industry’s major talking points, which are rarely data-first

Content became outward-facing, rather than product-led. As an authority on its field, Wireless Social needed to align itself with the industry’s major talking points, which are rarely data-first.

The website leads with the core proposition, followed by continued validation – anecdotally through major client testimonials and departmental benefits, and with data through unambiguous proof points. Leads are funnelled into a series of forms, designed to guide the user towards completion and provide Wireless Social with the data they need to act quickly, both for current & prospective clients.

To drive perception that the business is knowledgeable and relationship-oriented, we elevated the role of the customer success team. The website is laden with how-to guides and marketing inspiration to support the team members using Wireless Social’s products most often.

The work was completed during the Covid-19 pandemic, a period of rapid technological adoption in people’s personal & professional lives. Wireless Social’s products have never been more valuable to an industry that is now reliant on finding new audiences and needs to adapt their offer in real-time.

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