AZULIK Universe: A Magical Mix of Art, Sustainability and Community Engagement for a Luxury Brand

The case describes the hospitality brand AZULIK, which offers a unique luxury experience based on a set of contemporary values that resonate with the most demanding international consumers: connecting to art, nature, and local communities. In the process of building the resort, a series of brands were created to fill the various needs of guests—restaurants, bar, spa, shops, and a museum. Vadim Grigoryan, marketing consultant to AZULIK, is tasked to bring order to the portfolio of independent brands created. Managing multiple brands is expensive, inefficient, and fails to exploit the potential synergies that can be realized through a thoughtful brand architecture to create a differentiated and powerful offering to customers. The case puts students in Vadim’s shoes and requires them to decode the AZULIK brand, articulate the values underpinning the brand’s identity, decide what role each of the independent brands should play, and whether and how these should be linked to the master brand. They thus have the opportunity to understand all the decisions necessary in creating a powerful brand architecture, as well as the frameworks to do so.

The focus is on how to create a brand architecture for a set of independent brands to exploit synergies, lower the cost of managing a disparate portfolio, and both strengthen the individual independent brands and the master brand. The case draws on the brand relationship framework by Aaker and Joachimsthaler (2000) and a brand role framework by the authors that are combined to guide the creation of an optimal brand architecture. Students apply the frameworks in the context of the case to internalize the use of these tools and understand the tradeoffs in creating a powerful brand architecture. The case can be used in MBA or EMBA courses on branding and/or marketing strategy, and can potentially be used in advanced undergraduate courses. It also works well with executive participants. It is fitting for a full-day (or longer) open enrollment executive programme on branding, or as a half-day intervention in a company specific programme on managing a brand portfolio.