What does it actually take to build a hotel brand that holds up over time? This week Rachel sits down with Carly DeFilippo, co-founder of Cognoscenti Creative, a branding studio run by two sisters out of Colorado. Carly and her sister Lauren got their start working in-house at major restaurant groups before launching an agency built specifically for independent and boutique hospitality properties.

Carly shares how their intake process, what she jokingly calls brand therapy, goes way deeper than most operators expect. The goal is to surface what a property is truly about before a single logo or color palette ever gets made. She walks us through how they approach hotel naming (meaning comes last, energy comes first), what luxury actually means in 2025, and why having a clear and specific point of view might be the most underrated branding asset a hotel can have.

We also dig into the New Orleans property they named after a Walt Whitman connection, the Outrider Hotel in Manitou Springs, and why the Surf Hotel in Buena Vista keeps coming up as a gold standard for cohesive brand storytelling. And Carly gets refreshingly honest about what Cognoscenti does not do, and why that clarity is what makes their client relationships work.

Whether you are just starting to think about your brand or wondering if it is time for a refresh, this episode is full of practical perspective from someone who has lived on both sides of the business.

You can find Cognoscenti Creative on Instagram at @cognoscenticreative. Carly and Lauren are also both on LinkedIn and worth a follow.