IHG · 2017 · with Slalom

Thirteen hotel brands, and every one wanted its own pages

BAM is the portal IHG's Americas marketing teams work in, built on SharePoint. Each brand runs its own campaigns, and the team worried about pages multiplying, looking half-empty, and stepping on brand teams. I started with the information architecture, then designed the pages on top of it.

UX lead at Slalom. Information architecture, comps, and the revisions after client feedback.IA diagram and 6 comps, from the 2017 files

The problem

IHG runs InterContinental, Kimpton, Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo, and eight more brands in the Americas. Every one has its own marketing work.

/Marketing staff needed to find campaigns and assets across brands and multi-brand programs.

/The team didn't want a new page for every campaign. Pages would go stale or look empty.

/Brand pages had to keep each brand's look. Search had to stay neutral.

/They wanted it clean and upscale, with less orange and fewer, bigger photos.

Redrawn in 2026 from the 2017 IA diagram and comps, with a cleaner layout. Structure, navigation, and content match the originals. I replaced placeholder text and used stock hotel photos.

The structure came first

Five branches and a set of tags. The key decision: brand campaigns and multi-brand campaigns share one landing page template, filled by tagged content. Nobody builds a new page per campaign, and a campaign page fills itself as content is tagged.

information architectureSite tree, content types, and tags. The shared template is the dashed node.

The home page got quieter

After the first round of feedback, the cards over the hero came off and the hero became a slider with one headline. The featured video stayed. The priority band dropped to three cards, with orange saved for actions.

homeThe revised home page, after client feedback.

Video, podcasts, and images in one place

Media Center has four modes: media center, image library, podcasts, and stream. A featured video up top, a grid of what's streaming, and the team podcast below. Each video shows plays and likes so teams can see what's getting watched.

media centerFeatured video, streaming grid, and podcast list.

What made it work

Information architecture as the first deliverable, not an afterthought.

One shared template instead of a page per campaign.

A home page revised from real client feedback, on the record.

Orange saved for actions, gray for everything else.

SharePoint and Office 365 that look like IHG.

Outcome

BAM launched as the home base for IHG's Americas marketing teams.

/Teams found campaigns and assets for any brand from one search.

/New campaigns went live by tagging content, not building pages.

/The same structure carried over to the avid hotels launch site.