Daniella McNulty on art in everyday life, hospitality and solidarity

In 2019 and 2020, we spent days (and nights) at the Normandy Hotel in Paris with some of our friends. Daniella McNulty, one of a kind international marketing director for Machefert group, talks to us about how she sees her role in relation to creativity and possible collaborations in the hospitality sector.

Novembre: You acknowledge complicated histories as part of “hospitality”, as part of culture, as part of topics that are seen as more emotive. How do you think about contextualizing, or adding that history, within your marketing strategy?

Daniella McNulty: I feel that the history and cultural context of a physical space are both quintessential defining factors for the marketing strategy of that space, or the company to which it may belong. For example, Normandy Hotel is a member of Machefert Group, a group of 21 boutique hotels & luxury resorts in Paris, Saint-Tropez and Marrakech, and our marketing strategies for each hotel are adapted to the history and cultural context of each physical location.

The very definition of “hospitality” implies a maelstrom of experiences, and therefore many potentially complicated histories, as you mentioned. “Hospitality”, as defined by the Oxford Dictionary, refers to “friendly and generous behaviour towards guests”, as well as “food, drink or services that are provided by an organization for guests, customers” Since its creation in 1877, the Normandy Hotel has been providing all of the above (and more!) to its guests, in the heart of the luxury district of Rue Saint-Honoré Paris 1e. Normandy Hotel is therefore, itself, the essence of many lifetimes of “complicated histories,” having lived through two world wars and more.

The grand old hotel is currently undergoing renovation for the first time in several decades and every single one of its 120 rooms is totally unique yet co-existing with its neighbours : 5* luxury suites, half-renovated concrete spaces, and not-yet renovated rooms from the 70s and 80s. The co-existence of these histories in one space is now called “Normandy Le Chantier”, an experiential concept within which our clients and visitors can wander freely between worlds, and within which many amazing artistic concepts can come to life. Only within a continually evolving space like Normandy Le Chantier could unexpected avant-gardist events come to life.

What are you always trying to look at, when considering cultural partnerships?

Our main considerations when considering cultural partnerships are threefold :

1. Could this partnership be a potentially positive revenue-generating business success, or a positive reputation-building act of PR?

2. Do the people proposing this partnership share our values? If not, can we imagine finding a compromise with them that works for both parties?

3. If there is to be no positive cashflow, no PR or communication, and no value-sharing exchange, does this partnership meet the definition of a “charity” action?

How do you measure the success of such projects?

Depending on the vision of the project, the intention, and the business plan (if relevant), we would measure the success in several different ways.

If the project answers the first consideration (“ Could this partnership be a potentially positive revenue generating business success, or a positive reputation-building act of PR?”) then we would measure the success through a well-balanced P&L, a solid ROI-positive business plan, or positive reputation-building PR (ATL/BTL, paid/earned, involving which influencers and KOLs, etc).

If the project answers the second consideration (“Do the people proposing this partnership share our values? If not, can we imagine finding a compromise with them that works for both parties?”) then we would sit down with leading members of both teams, and express our key values, to find overlaps. Examples could be : Promoting brands and companies “Made In France”, insisting on organic produce or full “traçabilité” in our F&B endeavours, etc.

Finally, if the project falls into the third category of consideration (“If there is to be no positive cashflow, no PR or communication, and no value-sharing exchange, does this partnership meet the definition of a “charity” action?”) then the main measures for success would be the amount of help we can provide for free, in solidarity. For example, we offered one of our 4 boutique hotels for free during the first confinement, in order to house and care for medical personnel in Paris, between long shifts at their hospitals. This final category of project does not make money or obtain articles and social media posts, because that is not the KPI measure we used to determine success.

You strike me as a person interested in opening up new spaces (mental, social, geographical…) for the mind to open, and also to go with the flow of a changing world. How do you encourage your peers and colleagues at Machefert toward that worldview?

Before joining Machefert Group as CMO, I spent time in FMCG (Heineken), Luxury (L’Oréal) and then Tech (startups), so I decided to look for an experience that would unite my skills and experiences into one: Hospitality. After receiving the offer, I checked the group’s online ecosystem and saw that they did not yet have a Marketing team, mobile-friendly websites, or key communication analytics such as Facebook Business Manager or Google Marketing Platforms. We made sure to develop these first and foremost, before going onto more innovative ideas.

Once the basics were covered, the group was then in a better place to start considering avant-gardist events as a way to generate interest in our unused hotel rooms, and other non-traditional ideas such as the new concept store, Le Village du Normandy… So things have changed, for the better! I am lucky to have quite a few people here at Machefert Group with whom I have been able to bring many unexpected creative projects to life, namely the Deputy CEO, Kevin Machefert. There are several hotel directors and F&B teams that also share our vision and are interested in transforming the physical spaces they have at their disposal into new mental, social, creative spaces, as you said, to go with the flow of an ever-changing world. Our collaborations with The Community and Stéphane Ashpool have also been all about opening up new spaces to the public, to create new mental, social, and geographical spaces to enjoy art, fashion, hospitality and music

Alongside these fellow creative spirits, I continue to lead through example by making sure that those who are not convinced by our ideas have more and more proof that art and innovation are the way forward.

If artists radically expand the role of art into everyday life, what do you think can happen?

Art expands the mind and allows us to think differently, like philosophy. Without art and philosophy, we are akin to horses wearing blinders, only looking forward, following the status quo and not considering any other possibilities available. I therefore feel that the inclusion of art into everyday life is as necessary is the inclusion of new technologies, ROI-positive business strategies, or indeed, religion. The more we can open our minds through art, the more likely we are to find the solutions for the problems we are currently trying to solve.

When you look at the world you live in personally, and ask yourself, “What makes sense?”, what do you see?

When I consider the world that I live in today, I am aware that it is not quite the same world that my peers might live in, and definitely not the same world as someone with whom I have nothing in common, is living in. While we might all share the same space and be affected by the same external factors, from a global pandemic to a political election, and so forth, our perception of the world tends to be pretty subjective. My answer to the question “what makes sense?” is therefore pretty personal, and intrinsically linked to my perception of everything around me.

I see a lot of suffering in the world we live in today, but I also see a lot of beauty, co-existing like flowers sprouting between crumbling buildings in a concrete jungle. I am an optimist, and I believe that there will always be beautiful things to appreciate, however dark our days can get, we need to train ourselves to look for the light and not to focus on the clouds. If we can all do this together, then we can spread the beauty we see far and wide, to counteract the negativity that we have been seeing more and more of in modern-day mainstream media.

What makes sense to me today is solidarity, empathy, creativity and collaboration.