As business owners and marketing professionals, we’re constantly searching for the secret sauce that transforms ordinary companies into extraordinary brands. While we often look to luxury brands or industry disruptors for inspiration, sometimes the most powerful lessons come from unexpected places. Today, I want to share a fascinating case study that changed how I view brand consistency—and why it should matter to you regardless of your price point or market position.
Why Consistency Is Your Brand’s Most Valuable Asset
Before diving into our story, let’s establish why this matters to you. Consistency is the fourth and perhaps most critical pillar of a good brand:
- Good product
- Good story
- Good experience
- Consistency
Consistency is the binding force that transforms your products, story, and customer experience into a cohesive brand. Without it, even exceptional offerings and compelling narratives will crumble into disjointed encounters that fail to build lasting customer relationships.
Whether you’re running a small business or managing marketing for a large corporation, consistency is what separates forgettable businesses from memorable brands. It’s what allows you to:
- Command premium pricing
- Build genuine customer loyalty
- Scale successfully beyond founder oversight
- Create defensible market positioning
Now, let’s explore how one of the world’s most prestigious luxury brands learned this lesson from what might seem like the least likely source.
The Importance of Consistency: A Four Seasons Case Study
Most people associate the Four Seasons with exceptional hospitality and a consistent, excellent experience. What many don’t know is that its approach to consistency was inspired by an unlikely source: McDonald’s. This surprising connection illustrates that consistency transcends price points and business categories—it’s the common denominator among all great brands.
In the early years of building the Four Seasons brand, founder Isadore Sharp became fascinated with McDonald’s operational model. Isadore became obsessed with the McDonald’s model. One of my favorite takeaways from my research was learning about Sharp’s obsession with McDonald’s as the model for taking the Four Seasons to the next level. In his view, McDonald’s had built a global empire not through exceptional cuisine but through unparalleled consistency. The customer knew exactly what to expect every time, anywhere in the world, and McDonald’s quality never veered.
In Isadore’s view, McDonald’s sold its value through consistency in both product and overall experience. The brand became what felt like an overnight empire because it offered stability and consistency within the customer’s mind.
Sharp recognized that while luxury hotels promised outstanding service, there was a massive gap between marketing and reality. This is precisely why Sharp set out to become a hotelier in the first place—he was frustrated by how all the existing hotels professed luxury as a marketing statement but didn’t live up to it. The focus on service in hospitality was not new when Isadore started his first location in 1961. In fact, almost every hotel was focused on a message of hospitality in their marketing. The problem was that the focus on hospitality was a marketing ploy and not a true focus.
In the early years, when Isadore Sharp was building the Four Seasons, an experience like theirs had not existed. Wealthy travellers could expect top-notch service from a one-off location in a city like Paris, London or New York, but it was an isolated experience not executed by a brand chain. Isadore wanted the Four Seasons name to become synonymous with a standard of excellence, and he knew that the only way to achieve this was to instill consistency.
McDonald’s was my first real job, and I can say firsthand how exceptional their training was—far more rigorous than most people expect. Every motion, every customer interaction, every cooking procedure was standardized and rehearsed until it became second nature. Nothing in the operation was left to chance.
The Training Session That Changed Luxury Hospitality
Isadore reached out to the CEO of McDonald’s Canada and asked if he could join a training day session to learn their protocols and SOPs (standard operating procedures). Sharp initially went alone to a McDonald’s training session and was so impressed that he immediately arranged to bring his executive team back for a second visit.
When he and his team visited McDonald’s, they were struck by an unexpected detail: while McDonald’s regularly updated its advertising with fresh campaigns, their training videos appeared to be decades old. Isadore’s core takeaway was how dated their training videos were. At the time, McDonald’s had new TV creatives monthly, but their training videos looked like they were over 20 years old. As Sharp notes in his autobiography: “These videos looked like they were made twenty years ago, which seemed bizarre for a company producing new TV commercials practically every month.”
This observation revealed a profound truth, The age of the videos showed that McDonald’s had invested heavily in developing effective systems early, tested them to perfection, and maintained them unchanged for years. Once they were set, they became universal and didn’t require an update. What took time to ensure consistent execution was timeless for the brand.
Isadore insisted his C-Suite team join him in a training session at McDonald’s so that they could implement something similar within the Four Seasons. When Sharp suggested that his luxury hotel chain should learn from a fast-food operation, his team initially resisted. “Isadore was laughed at and reminded that the Four Seasons was a filet mignon compared to a McDonald’s burger.” But after witnessing the power of McDonald’s systems firsthand, they embraced the approach. The Four Seasons ended up adopting much of the theory behind McDonald’s systems and used this to develop one of the most comprehensive approaches to repeatable service ever seen in hospitality. From that moment on, the Four Seasons systems became a thing of legend.
The Unglamorous Reality of Brand Excellence
What’s fascinating is that much of the behind-the-scenes work at Four Seasons actually lacks glamour—it’s all checklists, protocols, and systems. The brand isn’t great because it’s fancy; it’s great because it focuses relentlessly on consistency.
The Four Seasons adapted McDonald’s principles to develop comprehensive systems for consistent service delivery that revolutionized luxury hospitality. Today, “Four Seasons service” has become colloquial with a certain level of attention to care that someone can expect, all because Sharp recognized that consistency was the secret ingredient behind McDonald’s global success.
Key Takeaways for Your Business
The takeaway from this story is that the Four Seasons became a great brand because Isadore Sharp understood the power of consistency. This story is a fantastic illustration that one of the most luxurious brands in the world earned its systems through an affordable generic brand like McDonald’s. It doesn’t matter where your brand is categorically or from a price point perspective, focusing on consistency is the difference between growing a brand or running a business.
The lesson is clear: regardless of your brand’s category or price point, systems that ensure consistency are the difference between running a business and building a brand that scales. Whether you sell $2 hamburgers or $2,000 hotel rooms, your customers need to know exactly what to expect every time they engage with you.
Here’s what this means for you:
- Systems are the foundation of consistency. Don’t rely on individual talent or founder oversight—document, standardize, and systematize every aspect of your customer experience.
- What works doesn’t need constant reinvention. Once you’ve established effective processes, preserve them relentlessly rather than chasing the next trend.
- Consistency should be measured. Track variance in customer experience across locations, channels, and touchpoints as a leading indicator of brand health.
- Learn from unexpected sources. The most valuable brand lessons often come from outside your industry or price point.
To master the art of branding, you must be relentless about consistency. It’s exhausting work, checking every detail, training every team member, maintaining standards across every touchpoint, but it’s the non-negotiable price of building a brand that commands loyalty, premium pricing, and sustainable growth.
Don’t keep struggling with fragmented marketing tactics when what you need is a cohesive brand consistency strategy. The Four Seasons and McDonald’s story proves that systematic consistency creates loyal customers and builds memorable brands, not just businesses.
Download my Masterclass and take the first step toward developing brand systems that turn your products and services into experiences customers return to again and again.
xx,
Camille