Vacayo WINS Brandathon NYC over MLK weekend!
How we 'hacked' the creative industry to develop a complete package of Vacayo brand assets in just 48 hours at minimal cost.
We had an intensive weekend-long branding hackathon last week, where we were paired with talented creatives at the top of their fields (designer, Alexis Copithorne; strategist, Saif Ishtiaque and copywriter, Mike Sojka). Our objective was to take our business and turn it into a brand by the conclusion of weekend.
“Branding is not a company name, logo, tagline or the newest marketing campaign,” Stoutenborough says. “A brand is a company’s or product’s identity, and to understand what that means, you must go to the customers and prospective customers and ask them what they think, feel and expect when they see the company or product, because those thoughts, feelings and expectations are the brand. A company does not own its brand—its customers and prospects do.”
Obviously it's impossible to come up with a brand in one weekend without being prepared. That's why being prepared is something we take seriously at Vacayo similar to how being prepared is important to being a great sushi chef. It is how we are able to turn a furnishing process that normally takes weeks to only 48 hours on average at Vacayo.
In the end of the weekend 'brandathon', Vacayo was named the winning team! A packed room of spectators were pumped when our team presented during the Demo Day and people were coming up to us right and left with their Airbnb stories and landlord woes, excited about our approach. Our creatives deserve most of the credit for this win, but it also serves as a great proof of concept for Vacayo.
The brandathon took place at Galvanized NYC over Martin Luther King Weekend, and featured some really impressive judges who made themselves available for mentorship throughout the daunting process (see below):
1. Sallie Jain, VP of Venture Capital, SeedInvest
2. Baumann Bastien, Head of Design for Ogilvy & Mather
3. Nobles Crawford; Communications Strategy Director for Droga5
(Pic of our team with the judges post-win)
Here's a glimpse of our new streamlined landing page:
Here's to many more transformative experiences for Vacayo as we move onto the new phase in our company journey!
- The Vacayo Team