{"id":17071,"date":"2017-05-06T21:30:30","date_gmt":"2017-05-07T01:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/?p=17071"},"modified":"2017-05-06T21:30:30","modified_gmt":"2017-05-07T01:30:30","slug":"branding-lifes-moments-melissa-lisa-holladay-89","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/branding-lifes-moments-melissa-lisa-holladay-89\/","title":{"rendered":"Branding life\u2019s moments: Melissa \u201cLisa\u201d Holladay \u201989"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Clemson<\/a>
\nAs global brand leader and vice president for The Ritz-Carlton and St. Regis Hotels & Resorts, Lisa Holladay says her job isn\u2019t to sell you a room, but to provide guests an experience. \u201cThe \u2018Why?\u2019 we exist as a company isn\u2019t to sell hotel rooms or to sell beds, but it\u2019s to create memories,\u201d she said.
\nLanding at the Ritz-Carlton from Clemson wasn\u2019t a straight line for Holladay. As an education major, Holladay had plans of entering the classroom. Even though she loved teaching high school seniors, student teaching revealed she didn\u2019t want to move into the classroom. Next was graduate school at Georgetown University to pursue an English degree, but a study abroad program in England revealed to Holladay that she loved travel. Her path eventually led to a public relations firm in Washington, D.C., then to a non-profit. A half dozen jobs later she was in San Francisco and found her niche with Mercedes-Benz.
\n\u201cI grew up there,\u201d she said about staying with the company for over a decade. \u201cI loved it. I knew I wanted to be passionate about something, but I didn\u2019t know what it was. That\u2019s when I went to work for Mercedes-Benz and did everything from PR to marketing to advertising.\u201d
\nHer last move with Mercedes took her to New Jersey and New York where she was national manager for experiential marketing for Mercedes-Benz USA, and where she finally found her \u201cWhy?\u201d \u2014 her love of brand management.
\n[pullquote]\u201cMy job is to make people fall so in love with our brands that they are loyal beyond reason,\u201d she said.[\/pullquote]
\nWhen the opportunity came open from Marriott to interview for the Ritz-Carlton, Holladay said she studied like there was no tomorrow.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s travel, food, wine, spa, luxury \u2026 I really, really wanted that job and thought, \u2018They\u2019re never going to hire me because I have no hospitality background,\u2019\u201d she said.
\nBeing an outsider was her \u201cin.\u201d \u201cThey wanted to extend the brand as more than just a hotel company,\u201d she said.
\nNow as a global brand leader for luxury brands, Holladay wants to have guests explore the city and the hotels, while providing relevant, contemporary luxury that aligns with core brand values.
\n\u201cThere\u2019s a reason my two longest career stints have been with brands that have heritage,\u201d she said. \u201cI should have known when I was at Clemson that I was a brand person because even then I was enamored with the Tiger paw on everything, the football team running down the hill and the story of Clemson.\u201d
\n\u2014 Julia Sellers<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As global brand leader and vice president for The Ritz-Carlton and St. Regis Hotels & Resorts, Lisa Holladay says her job isn\u2019t to sell you a room, but to provide guests an experience. \u201cThe \u2018Why?\u2019 we exist as a company isn\u2019t to sell hotel rooms or to sell beds, but it\u2019s to create memories,\u201d she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":17078,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[881,882,2717,2977],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-17071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumniprofiles","tag-cw-spring-2017","tag-cw-spring-2017-alumni-profile","tag-st-regis-hotels-resorts","tag-the-ritz-carlton"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2017\/04\/Lisa_Holladay_89aa.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17071"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=17071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}