The Challenge
Cheryl Rowley Design (CRD) began as an eponymous firm 25 years ago. While it initially made a name for itself designing the interiors of boutique hotels, it soon became a sought-after designer for luxury brands. Though the firm’s projects had made it frequently on the pages of national architecture and design magazines, the firm itself was rarely given mention. Barbara Pressman supervised and implemented a PR campaign (as a consultant to another PR firm) that finally brought the firm the name recognition it deserved.
The Approach
Cheryl Rowley Design's portfolio of projects included 20 hotels for Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group, as well as Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, Rosewood, and hotels for Marriott International. These noteworthy projects gave Barbara Pressman the opportunity to showcase CRD’s design aesthetic, all the while placing the spotlight squarely on CRD.
The Results
Pressman secured scores of articles putting CRD front and center. These included profiles in consumer magazines, and hotel trade magazines based nationally and internationally. Cheryl Rowley was also tapped by Urban Land, a respected journal for land use and development professionals worldwide, to provide expert commentary.
Toward the end of the campaign, CRD was engaged to design interiors for its first luxury senior community development. Using this single project, still on the boards, Pressman bolstered CRD’s credibility in the field of senior housing, by securing articles on the development and providing expert opinion to numerous senior-housing and multi-family housing publications.
Act II
More than two years after the end of the campaign, when Cheryl Rowley decided to close her interiors office and move to Vancouver to join her family and pursue a more private lifestyle, she turned to BPPR to strategize and implement a plan to announce the news to her colleagues in the industry.
The media responded with immediate interest to the surprising news. BPPR reconnected with all the hotel trade magazine editors, with whom she had formed close relationships during the prior campaign, resulting in stories that were both touching and personal. Hospitality Design even agreed to extend the magazine’s feature coverage of Cheryl Rowley onto its website, with a captioned slide show of her favorite projects supplied by BPPR.
