Website & press rebrand
Based on the insight that the most interesting thing about a glitzy hotel is the people who've stayed there, we delivered the first brand awareness campaign for the prestigious Dorchester Collection of hotels. And over the years, these hotels have attracted an extraordinary collection of guests.
Press ads that featured these famous faces from past and present drove the curious to the website, where they discovered more about each star's tale that I'd researched and written. Having created a buzz in the industry press, the campaign went on to be featured in the New York Times and Vanity Fair.
The Dorchester - Liz Taylor
'A queen-sized bath'
She was about to star in the most expensive movie epic that had ever been made, a role that was to make her the world's most celebrated movie star of her day. A year later, she found herself reclining in a luxurious marbled bath once again - as Cleopatra.
Meanwhile, the on-screen passion of the film's leading stars was recreated off-screen. Elizabeth's Cleopatra had found her Antony in Richard Burton. Both were married at the time, and their love affair attracted worldwide attention.
By the following year, they were married. However, as much as they loved the Harlequin Suite, the couple decided to mark their marriage by spending their honeymoon somewhere else, so they decamped to the Oliver Messel suite one floor above.
Le Meurice - Orson Welles
'An inspired vision'
Whilst filming 'The Trial' during his stay at Le Meurice in 1962, Welles received news that the Yugoslavian sets he was due to film on in two days' time hadn't even been constructed.
At five in the morning, pacing his room with thoughts of closing down his film, he glanced out of his bedroom window and saw what he took to be the moon, "Then miraculously, there appeared to be two of them. Two moons, like a sign from heaven!" he later commented. However, on each of the moons he discerned various numbers, and suddenly realised that they were the clock faces of the abandoned railway station, the Gare d'Orsay.
Struck with inspiration, Welles found a cab, crossed the Seine and entered the deserted station. There, in the silence of the Parisian night, he was to discover a haunted, Kafkaesque landscape - and the location that saved his film.
Plaza Athénée - Marlene Dietrich
"Glamour is what I sell. It's my stock in trade."
In 1930 Marlene Dietrich stepped into the limelight and into a trouser suit. But her bold, androgynous look shocked even liberal Hollywood. Legend has it that on the SS Normandie ocean liner, she was warned that she would be arrested for wearing trousers into Paris. "Then they had better arrest me" came the characteristic reply. Fortunately, the police escorted Marlene straight to the Plaza Athénée, where style has always been appreciated.
By the time she moved into her apartment just across L'Avenue Montaigne, the hotel had become her second home, and the catwalk-like Galerie des Gobelins restaurant her favoured rendezvous. For the next 15 years, Vincent the concierge sent newspapers and magazines across to her apartment every day.
Beverly Hills Hotel - Katherine Hepburn
"If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun."
The big splash this famously headstrong leading lady made in Hollywood almost never happened. Voted the greatest American screen legend of all time by the American Film Institute, acting's gain was tennis's loss.
As a determined and talented player and a frequent resident of Beverly Hills, she never missed her daily 6am tennis lesson at the hotel. And what followed one game on a particularly hot Californian morning has become part of the hotel's folklore. Running from the court towards the pool and shunning the privacy of the poolside cabanas, the resolute actress strode onto the diving board and executed a neat back-flip into the pool - fully clothed.
Although her dip undoubtedly cooled her off, she still remained hot Hollywood property, going on to win an unprecedented four Oscars, and making a splash well into her eighties.
