Why Brand Homes Matter, and How to Win Stakeholder Buy-In.
A brand home is a flagship experiential destination that immerses audiences in the world of a brand. Far beyond a retail or showroom environment, it serves as a powerful platform for storytelling, cultural engagement, and brand-building, often blending heritage, innovation, and interactive experiences to create lasting emotional connections. Exemplified by destinations such as the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin or LEGO House in Billund, brand homes deepen loyalty, strengthen advocacy, and generate new revenue streams, positioning the brand not only as a product but as a cultural icon.
If you’re trying to make the case for a brand home, you’ll know the toughest challenge isn’t creativity or even construction, it’s convincing your stakeholders. Boards want evidence of ROI. Finance teams compare it to the cost of hiring a hotel ballroom. Operations worry about complexity. HR wonders if it’s relevant to employees. Too often, brand homes get dismissed as “a nice-to-have” or worse, “a fancy museum.”
The reality is different. Brand homes are strategic business assets that generate revenue, build brand equity, create trade advocacy, galvanise employees, and save money on operations. They pay for themselves when done right, and there’s growing academic and industry evidence to prove it.
Why Brand Homes Matter More Than Ever
A brand home is the most immersive, concentrated expression of what your brand stands for. Unlike an advert or a rented event hall, it’s your space, under your control, with your story told on your terms. Taking learnings from the drinks sector, we can break down the value added and analyse how we can rationalise these benefits.
Here are the five impact pillars stakeholders need to see:
1. Marketing and Brand Equity
Immersion pays: Research shows immersive exhibitions increase brand recall by up to 70 percent compared to static displays .
Loyalty lift: 85 percent of people who attend brand events are more likely to buy, and 70 percent become repeat customers .
Brand perception: Johnnie Walker Princes Street saw a 16-point jump in Net Promoter Score after visits .
Advocacy through sharing: 98 percent of visitors create social content at brand experiences . Every guest is a media channel.
2. Customer Engagement
Visitors = revenue: Scotch whisky centres attracted over 2 million visitors in 2022, generating £85m in direct spend .
Global icons: The Guinness Storehouse hosted 1.5m visitors in 2023, serving 1.24m pints and welcoming 24m visitors since opening .
Memorable journeys: Personalisation works. At Johnnie Walker, tours adapt to each guest’s flavour profile, creating emotional connections that last.
3. Trade Advocacy
Brand homes aren’t just for tourists and potential customers. They’re powerful tools for distributors, wholesalers, bartenders, suppliers, and retailers. They're educational environments for all. A training session held in your own branded environment is more memorable and persuasive than any deck in a hotel meeting room. Whisky brand homes routinely host trade partners, turning them into advocates who can sell the story as well as just the product.
This is replicable across all industries. From technology products that need distributors to understand the product story and not just the features, to educating retailers through point of sale training. It's a branded educational centre, a piece of branded real estate that can be utilised to immerse all kinds of stakeholders in the core heart of the brand.
4. Employee Engagement
Employees feel proud when they can literally walk through the brand’s story. Spaces like the Guinness Storehouse are as much about inspiring staff as wowing visitors . A brand home becomes a training hub, a morale booster, and a place where teams connect to the company’s culture.
From new joiners onboarding, to internship programs, to celebratory work parties, an owned piece of branded real estate ensures real employee engagement, boosting loyalty and retention and creating a beating heart at the centre of the brand.
5. Operational Savings
Hiring venues for product launches, board meetings, or training isn’t cheap. Having your own space means those costs drop dramatically. You can schedule events when you want, with full brand control.
Merging a basic 'client centre' with a controlled brand environment containing a hugely rich brand narrative, ensures a multifunctional space and floorplate that creates huge cost synergies, whilst also delivering additional value add through hitting deep brand objectives.
Talking ROI with Stakeholders and more importantly - the CFO
Stakeholders need proof. Here’s the business case they’ll understand:
Direct revenue: Tickets, retail, bars, food, private hire. Guinness and whisky centres generate tens of millions annually.
Cost avoidance: No more recurring venue hire for events. Your space amortises over time, and every additional event costs less.
Marketing ROI: Traditional ad spend disappears. Brand homes create reusable, shareable content. One Instagram post from a visitor is free reach.
Trade uplift: Hosting partners in-house deepens relationships and lifts sales across markets.
Brand equity: Companies aligning brand experience with customer experience achieve up to 3.5× revenue growth .
How to Win Stakeholder Buy-In
It’s not about glossy renders. It’s about showing each group how their needs are met:
Finance: Highlight revenue streams, event savings, and benchmark successes (Guinness, Johnnie Walker, Macallan).
Operations: Share examples where throughput, staffing, and safety were designed in (duplicate tasting rooms at Johnnie Walker, for example).
Marketing: Show brand homes are the ultimate content engine. 98 percent of guests create shareable material .
HR: Position it as an employee pride point and a cultural hub.
Sustainability: Demonstrate alignment with BREEAM, WELL, inclusivity and access standards.
One practical method: run workshops during RIBA Stage 1. Invite each stakeholder group to articulate what outcomes they need, then demonstrate how the brand home delivers them. This reframes the project from “why build it?” to “how do we build it to meet our needs?”
Design Principles That Reassure Stakeholders
Narrative first. The building is a stage, not just a shell.
Throughput and dignity. Parallel routes, flexible spaces, smart flow.
Invisible technology. Personalisation and measurement without gimmicks.
Compliance as brand behaviour. Accessibility and safety are proof of values.
Flexibility by default. Tours, VIP events, product launches, training, all in one venue.
Lessons from Drinks Brands
Macallan Distillery: The architecture is the brand, drawing 50k+ visitors annually to a structure that embodies craft and innovation.
Johnnie Walker Princes Street: 650,000 visits in two years . Personalised tasting journeys, duplicate rooms to manage flow, bars and lounges to maximise revenue.
Guinness Storehouse: Over 24m visitors since 2000 . A cultural landmark that doubles as one of Dublin’s top economic contributors.
Each proves the point: a brand home is not a cost, it’s an investment in long-term brand and business growth.
Final Word
Stakeholder hesitation is natural. But when you show them the evidence; footfall, revenue, loyalty, savings, advocacy, the case becomes undeniable.
A brand home is your most strategic platform. It builds revenue, equity, and relationships all at once. It pays for itself in tickets, retail, and event savings. It inspires employees and makes trade partners advocates. It creates content and memories that last a lifetime.
If you want to get stakeholders across the line, ask them one simple question: do you want your brand to be remembered, or just noticed?
Because the answer to that is the reason brand homes exist.
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If you’d like to find out more about how we can support in creating a landmark brand home experience, please reach out to our head of client services Tony McKenzie.
t.mckenzie@wearepopulate.com
