"We're creating our brands with this incredible understanding of unarticulated needs," says Scott Williams, chief creative officer for Sheraton, W, St. Regis and Westin -- the Starwood Hotels & Resorts franchise. It's a creative process he calls empathic design …

"One of my favorite exercises is actually capturing physical data," he continues. "I personally do an enormous amount of shooting at our hotels with a small handheld camera. I observe behavior, to see how guests are utilizing the space, how they're mobilizing, how they're getting to the elevator, how they're using their key (without being obviously observed on the other end!). We sketch, we take notes and then we do ethnography studies."

Sometimes, says Scott, empathic design creates a little bit of creative abrasion because some solutions may percolate that a hotel operator will just look at and conclude it can't be done. That's what happened with the introduction of the now-famous Heavenly Bed, an idea originated by Starwood CEO Barry Sternlicht, that centers on a white bedspread. It's not the most practical idea on the face of it, but a solution was found and it paid off in a big way.

"As soon as you walk into the room," says Scott, "you feel this subdued sense of calm because of the white bed. Guest satisfaction scores also go up because the rooms just look cleaner." Empathic design also resulted in the Heavenly Bath, known for its prodigious performance and a curved shower rod that gives the bather eight inches of extra elbowroom.

Explains Scott: "We came up with the curved shower rod because our customers have said, You know -- damn those shower curtains are skanky! I don't ever want to touch them. The rod actually is so beautifully designed that it also adds elegance to the room."

If Scott makes creating the perfect hotel experience sound just a little bit dramatic, well, that's to be expected. First the theater, then television -- teacher, writer, producer, director -- that's his background. Actually, Scott describes himself as someone who "wants to create drama and tell stories."

He is really good at it, too. Not satisfied merely to give the standard-issue overview of his career, Scott launches into a riveting, 28-minute tale of his journey from a young, would-be director and producer to his current position as chief creative officer at Starwood.

It's a story that starts with a valiant attempt to produce a play about apartheid, followed by a brief stint with the legendary Steppenwolf Theatre Company. It then detours into a creepy episode with a neighbor who murdered Scott's two dogs after they attacked one of his farm animals. Filled their chests with buckshot and left them for dead along an old dirt road. "It was like a Sam Shepherd play," he exclaims, clearly still seething from the episode. "Just one of those bizarre moments when you're full of rage and you just want to kill somebody."

Basically, Starwood needs to create entertainment brands.

Rather than kill the guy (not that he would actually do that, mind you), Scott got on an airplane and, using the $5,000 his grandmother had left him, took a trip around the world: "I bought one of those around-the-world tickets; as long as you kept going in the same direction you could make 15 stops." Everywhere he went -- from Denver to Moscow to Hong Kong -- he took in the local theatre. By the time he got back to Seattle, in December of 1989, he decided that the theatre, though he loved it, was a dead end. Television was where he needed to be.

After a brief turn as a teacher, Scott wangled his way into an in-house promotion and advertising job at Home Box Office and Cinemax, moving up to managing a group called Talent and Entertainment Features, doing the pre-shows for pop concerts as well as in-flight programming. He left there just shy of four years later to become a Vice President of New Media at Image Interactive, a multimedia production company. Next stop was as Vice President of Creative Services for ESPN Classic Sports, and then VP of Program Production and Creative Director for CBS Eye on People.

Scott landed at Starwood after meeting Barry Sternlicht while doing dishes at a parenting group. "Yeah," he recalls, "our wives were in a parenting class together and on the final night they had the husbands come in. I met Barry there and we got to chatting while doing the dishes afterwards, because he and his wife had hosted the meeting."

By the time the dishes were done, Barry had asked Scott to take a look at Starwood's advertising. Not long after, in April of 1999, Scott joined the company as its chief creative officer.



What's the essence of each of the Starwood brands?

Let me start with Sheraton, because it is undergoing a great rebirth. There is an iconic, international, global recognition of the Sheraton brand. When we did focus groups, we asked consumers to draw the logo for Sheraton. About 97 percent of them could actually sketch out the superman S crest with the wreath, or the chevron, around it.

So, there is enormous equity in the Sheraton brand, which manifests itself as human and worldly, authentic and very friendly. Everybody has a nice story to tell about Sheraton. People remember the friendly service, or when their dad traveled either domestically or internationally -- that Sheraton was always where he stayed. That was especially true internationally because Sheraton was the safe brand -- the American brand at the time.

With Sheraton, we have this heritage of great service. We are ramping that up now with the Sheraton Service Promise in North America. This is a service guarantee that states that if you're not satisfied -- we're not satisfied. Just tell us what the problem is, and we'll resolve it either through an amenity such as a free breakfast or extra points in our loyalty program, depending upon the nature of the problem. The idea is to motivate our hotel managers to fix their own problems and we are seeing overall improvements in guest satisfaction scores as a result.

How will that play out in your advertising?

In our new print campaign, you see one of our Sheraton associates smiling, direct camera, saying, "Something not perfect? Just say so." The first letter of "something" is the famous S crest. Because of the 97 percent awareness of the icon, we created this tagline -- this invitation -- which is a very strong call-to-action that anchors the advertising and says, "Sheraton, see for yourself."

Soon, we'll be introducing new television spots where we are using Let's Spend The Night Together, the classic Rolling Stones song. We have re-recorded the song with Convoy, an up-and-coming band, and a top-notch producer. Our agency, Deutsch, culled down from 75 bands to four, then we selected this band. They're a young, fun, neat-looking, polite group of guys who have now cut a killer rock-and-roll track.

So, we will be celebrating this rebirth -- this remix -- and this revitalization of the Sheraton brand. In the spot, we have this young group of guys experiencing the Sheraton brand and saying -- see for yourself -- we've got a new twist.

What are the operative attributes for Westin?

When you walk into a Westin, the positioning is to an affluent, younger, professional business and leisure traveler. Delivering unmatched comfort -- that is the key to Westin. There is this contemporary traveler, this early adopter, who is not afraid to get out on the early edge of trying new products and services.

And W?

The initial idea with W was that in the modern world, the modern traveler needs a modern hotel that doesn't have the off-putting attitude of some other boutiques. I'm not saying that all boutiques are off-putting, but that we wanted this sophistication, this wow factor.

Barry, when he developed W, created a whole vocabulary for W. You can see it in the icon, in the logo itself. There is a simplicity in W -- a heightened design awareness, an expression about the brand. It just says it all in that look. It is magnificent in its most simple form.

Wasn't W picked as the name because so many words that have positive attributes start with the letter, W?

Yes -- words like wow, wonderful, warm, witty. Actually, wired was a huge one for the modern traveler.

Was the idea to use a letter based on your learning from the power of the S in Sheraton?

No. There was no research for W. It was based entirely on Barry's intuition and he didn't over-think it -- which is why 16 or 17 Ws opened in record time. If W had been developed by a research team, we'd probably only have opened three hotels by now. Not that we didn't listen to the customer. Barry is a W customer and he knew exactly what he wanted.

The difference between W and all the other boutiques is that Barry tied it into a portfolio that would allow this modern, hip, contemporary traveler to have the power of a loyalty program like we have -- the Starwood Preferred Guest. Eighty-five percent of our W customers are members of the loyalty program.

By the way, Barry went up against all odds just like he has in his entire career, and said, You know what, we're going to have a loyalty program with no blackout periods. All his airline CEO pals called and said, You're going to go bankrupt. He said, You know what -- if I've got 200,000 points, why is it that when I want to fly my family to Paris on New Years Eve I can't do it? That ticks me off. I'm the most loyal customer they've got and yet they're screwing me. So he decided that the Starwood Preferred Guest loyalty program would have no blackouts or restrictions.

What is the thinking behind the Starwood Network and how is it being developed?

The thinking is that we've got a captive audience -- customers who are coming into our rooms and turning on the TV. The idea is to take advantage of this global distribution and captive customer base -- about 250,000 hotel rooms, a total of more than 750 properties in more than 80 countries -- to promote and sell additional Starwood services as well as enhance the brand experience overall.

It is going to be just a great way for us to speak directly with our customers. As soon as they check in and punch in their Starwood Preferred Guest numbers, we will be able to begin to respond to their preferences, all through our network, when they turn on the TV. We might offer a special deal on a bucket of golf balls or yoga classes -- whatever each guest is likely to be interested in, based on what we know about them.

Creating the Starwood Network is an especially gratifying experience for me for a number of reasons, starting with my background in television. But best of all is the opportunity to create the business plan for it. People have a tendency to say, "oh, he's a creative guru." But I consider myself to be a solid businessman, too. Starwood has totally supported me in that regard by sending me to Harvard Business School for a two-month, mini-MBA program, which was great.

Do you also put energy into developing Starwood per se as a brand, or does most of the energy go into the individual hotel brands?

We have struggled with that for the entire three-and-a-half years that I've been at Starwood, because, in this day and age, to launch a brand you need a lot of money. We have one camp that says, Guys, no matter what we're doing, we are branding it. Right now, if you go to Starwood.com, we have millions of members in our Starwood Preferred Guest program. We have this program, this idea that is called Starwood. Why shouldn't we make a conscious effort to go out and tell our customers what it is?

I've done two full-blown exploratory analyses with top-notch designers. We've tried to figure out how to create the parent brand. What is the structure of our company? Is it a silent brand? No, it's not. We're not Viacom; this isn't a holding company -- we have active participation by Starwood in products, such as Starwood Preferred Guest, Starwood Vacation Ownership, Starwood Vacations and Starwood Golf.

It's just one of those things where we are still a young company. In about two months, we will launch a magazine called The Best of Starwood, that is going to be left in guest rooms and sent to our top members. This is a labor of love that Barry has wanted to create for a long time. It's going to finally tell the story -- Barry's story -- of what Starwood means to him and what he hopes it means to our customers and the choices that they have by becoming a loyal member.

How do you see the Starwood hotel experience evolving and changing in the future?

Our customers will come to expect more. We will continue to drive our most loyal customers into an area where we will treat them the best. We will know the most about them and we will be incredibly respectful of their needs. You know, traveling is just such a grind. It's not going to get any easier. Whatever we can do to make our most valuable customers have the best possible stay -- we'll spend all of our time and energy around doing that.

What we want eventually is the top-level concierge service. We want somebody on the floor at all times. Automated check-in is going to be huge for us. We're putting kiosks in. The first one went into the W last week with great success and we're now rolling out an express checkout kiosk at the Shearton Manhattan, as well.

We want our SPG card -- the Starwood Preferred Guest card -- to become a live card so that it can, in the future, be a debit card. You will be able to store as many points as you possibly can on that card and complete all your transactions with it. You will be able to check-in with it and it will become your room key. If you want to transfer either cash into it or more points, you will be able to do that. You will be able to buy a cup of coffee, a cigar, or a gift at the hotel store.

So you see the future mostly in terms of an evolution in customer service?

Absolutely. No question. Attention to customer detail -- the whole Customer Relationship Management aspect -- that's only going to get greater and greater with erosion of share. That is why we have created very specific positions and philosophies around these brands.

In particular, with Sheraton -- I look to brands like Puma or Adidas who have had brands who were gigantic in their own right and then had a little dip and then they've come back. Revitalizing, rebirthing, reenergizing a brand like Sheraton is so complicated. It is one of the great challenges of my career, and being a part of a team effort, a collaborative effort to do so, is hugely satisfying.

Loyalty in the hotel category is very fickle. It is a rate-driven industry, unfortunately. We just can't fall into that commodity marketplace. We can't -- and we won't.