Hotel Fox
- Client Die Gestalten Verlag
- Project Interior design
- Year: 2005
99% of all hotel rooms are boring
Hotel Fox was part of a mega launch event for Volkswagen's new micro car for the young, urban and creative. The idea was to move beyond the standard car launch and do something intelligent which
targeted the consumer group directly. Volkswagen got a number of Europe's and Copenhagen's best heads to contribute and create a hotel, a restaurant, a nightclub and a gallery all meant to embed
the car in its natural environment: the livable city.
e-Types designed two hotel rooms for Hotel Fox basing one room on typography and the other on the experience of staying in hotels. A series of faux-statistics commented ironically upon the
experience of staying in hotels starting with the following sentence on the door: '89% of all hotel guests do not expect any surprises when entering a hotel room'.
The strange part of it all was that all creative forces involved in the hotel and a long range of other projects did not know what they were promoting until after they had done their work. Maybe the fear was that everybody would do rooms, waiter uniforms or food based on car metaphors. But the fact of the matter is, that when you do not know what you are promoting, the only way out is to just do something that you like yourself. Something that has a presence by itself.
The question one might ask then is - was the product worthy of the packaging? Actually, to be honest, we think not. Yes, the VW Fox comes with striped upholstery reminiscent of Paul Smith. But it is a truly urban car? Does it deliver on the coolness that the flown-in Tapas chefs, custom designed uniforms and dazzling staff made you expect? The VW Fox replaced the VW Lupo which had much more substance as a mini-car: it was environmentally friendly, had personality and charm and first and foremost it had a certain X-factor that the Fox totally lacks. The launch event tried to supply the X. But if you regard branding as question of first making promises that contain aspiration and identification and then to deliver on those promises, the Fox Project is as big a failure branding-wise as the event was a success in itself.
The strange part of it all was that all creative forces involved in the hotel and a long range of other projects did not know what they were promoting until after they had done their work. Maybe the fear was that everybody would do rooms, waiter uniforms or food based on car metaphors. But the fact of the matter is, that when you do not know what you are promoting, the only way out is to just do something that you like yourself. Something that has a presence by itself.
The question one might ask then is - was the product worthy of the packaging? Actually, to be honest, we think not. Yes, the VW Fox comes with striped upholstery reminiscent of Paul Smith. But it is a truly urban car? Does it deliver on the coolness that the flown-in Tapas chefs, custom designed uniforms and dazzling staff made you expect? The VW Fox replaced the VW Lupo which had much more substance as a mini-car: it was environmentally friendly, had personality and charm and first and foremost it had a certain X-factor that the Fox totally lacks. The launch event tried to supply the X. But if you regard branding as question of first making promises that contain aspiration and identification and then to deliver on those promises, the Fox Project is as big a failure branding-wise as the event was a success in itself.
Read more and watch the video at www.project-fox.org
The hotel www.hotelfox.dk ROOM 304 & 414
