Creating a spark behind the scenes for Awaze
Branding
Awaze, Europe’s leading managed vacation rentals and holiday resorts business, needed a new lease of life via a new brand identity.
With over 110,000 properties in 36 countries and more than eight million guests annually, the brand is the powerhouse behind names like cottages.com, Hoseasons, James Villa Holidays, Landal GreenParks, and Novasol.
The brief was about uniting and inspiring internal audiences. The new branding needed to engage and reassure staff, owners, and investors by communicating confidence, trust, scale, and modernity. It also needed to be flexible enough to work as a subtle brand endorser, should the need arise in external communications.
What we did
FOUR developed a brand identity that represents the collective power and potential of the Awaze group. Our concept focused on the idea of ‘coming together’ and served as a visual metaphor for the various components of the business, including community, staff, property owners, partners, investors, destinations, and experiences.
The result is a striking, modern emblem resembling a spark or sunburst as a powerful symbol of energy, unity, and positivity that ties directly into the company’s ‘everyday amazing’ ethos.
The Challenge
The biggest challenge was creating a brand that needed to feel inspirational yet corporate, inclusive yet authoritative, and flexible yet distinctive, all while avoiding an overtly consumer-facing approach. The identity had to hold its own across different departments, cultures, and markets, yet retain a strong sense of cohesion and clarity.
Results
The new brand identity gives Awaze a bold internal presence and a recognisable visual anchor for its diverse global team. It conveys strength, scale, and synergy, reflecting Awaze’s status as a market leader while nurturing a sense of pride and purpose among those who power it from within. The spark emblem is already proving a valuable asset in stakeholder communications, internal culture building, and investor presentations.
Reflections
Branding that’s not consumer-facing and visible to external eyes can often be overlooked, but this project showed just how impactful internal branding can be.
The Awaze identity acts as a rallying point for employees and partners, giving form to the group’s values and ambitions. It’s proof that when a brand starts strong from the inside, it can shine everywhere.
