Crowne Plaza, one of the hotel brands in the InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) portfolio, has announced the second year of its ‘Think Tank’ concept which aims to cement its position as the hotel of choice for the discerning business traveller.

This year, the Crowne Plaza Think Tank is celebrating innovation and will be working with leaders from the business and creative industries, known as the ‘Crowne Plaza innovators’, to create bespoke innovations to directly benefit business guests staying in its hotels.

The new creative platform follows on from the success of its 2007 Think Tank activity, which saw the hotel brand partner with a group of visionary thought-leaders, ‘the Crowne Plaza mavericks’. Crowne Plaza ran a series of unique events across Europe where the mavericks offered business travellers an insight into the tools that they use to stay ahead of the game, as well as providing practical advice and inspiration.

Crowne Plaza will collaborate with a number of innovators, each of which will create a different product or service for its hotels. Properties across Andorra, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Middle East, The Netherlands, Spain and the UK will each get a selection of the unique innovations. Each of these will be focused on an area of the hotel which is key for business travellers, including meeting rooms, bedrooms and club lounges.

Today Crowne Plaza has announced the first innovator to be involved in the campaign. Roger von Oech is an author, inventor and speaker, who specialises in devising methods and products that inspire creativity and maximise energy within meetings. As his innovation for the Think Tank campaign, Roger has designed a ‘Think Box’ which will be available within selected meeting rooms across the region.

Each Think Box contains three inspirational tools which are designed to troubleshoot common meeting problems including loss of focus, lack of creativity and difficulty in achieving meeting goals. These are the Inspire Boards, designed to engage the mind and help stimulate positive energy at the start of a meeting, the Ball of Whacks, to reinvigorate creativity, and the Think Cards, to help participants gain a new perspective on a problem being discussed.

The dedicated Think Tank microsite, www.crowneplazathinktank.com, has re-launched to support the innovators and will this year host a variety of business tools, including news feeds and regularly updated tips and advice from the innovators.

With the new innovations at its heart, the campaign is also supported by various communications. These include a media partnership across Europe and the Middle East, point of sale material within Crowne Plaza properties, promotional support through newsletters to members of IHG’s Priority Club Rewards programme - the largest hotel loyalty scheme in the world - together with further print and online advertising support across the region.

Gavin Hawthorn, IHG’s Vice President Business & Relationship Marketing EMEA, said: “We are delighted to announce the second year of the Crowne Plaza Think Tank Campaign. Crowne Plaza hotels are designed with the business traveller in mind and dedicated to offering our guests an inspiring space to think whilst staying with us. Our pioneering in-hotel innovations will further enhance this offering by providing a real benefit to those staying and doing business in our European and Middle Eastern hotels.”

The campaign has been developed by lead strategic agency Out of the Blue Communications (event and experiential marketing), Anorak (microsite), Carat (media buyers), Henry’s House (PR) and Proximity (advertising).