When Florentine Maximalism Meets Digital Soul

Translating an Eclectic Florentine Vision into Authentic Online Presence

Project Duration: 4 months, Winter 2024

Creative Direction: Carmen Durante, Calliope Studio

There are spaces that refuse to whisper. HH Firenze is one of them, a boutique hotel in Florence that speaks in bold colors, layered textures, and walls lined with stories bound in leather and cloth. It's maximalism with intention, eclecticism with soul, a visual feast that feels like stepping into a Wes Anderson film where every frame has been meticulously curated yet somehow remains effortlessly alive.

But when we began working together, this extraordinary physical presence had no digital reflection. Worse, the hotel's Instagram profile and Business Manager had been stolen by unknown parties, leaving the brand vulnerable and voiceless online.

HH's Instagram feed before and after

The Challenge: Finding What Was Lost, Building What Never Existed

The initial work wasn't glamorous. It was detective work, navigating Meta's labyrinthine recovery systems, gathering documentation, proving ownership, negotiating with platforms that rarely respond quickly. But beyond reclaiming stolen accounts, there was a deeper challenge: how do you translate overwhelming beauty into a screen?

HH Firenze is the kind of place where every corner deserves a photograph. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves overflow with vintage volumes and carefully selected coffee table books. Jewel-toned velvets drape over furniture from different eras that somehow belong together. Symmetrical compositions reveal themselves naturally, as if the space itself understood visual grammar. It's rich, layered, unapologetically abundant.

The digital world, however, demands simplification. Scroll culture rewards clean lines and minimalist palettes. But we refused to dilute what made this hotel extraordinary.

Strategy: Honoring the Vision, Not Taming It

Working with the property owner meant understanding her vision deeply, not just aesthetically, but emotionally. She had created something rare: a hospitality experience that felt like entering someone's carefully curated personal library, their travel-worn living room, their collection of beautiful accidents and intentional choices.

My role as Creative Director wasn't to impose a strategy. It was to become custodian of her vision, translating it for audiences who hadn't yet walked through those doors but needed to feel the space through their screens.

Every photoshoot became an exercise in patience and precision. Lighting had to honor the warmth of vintage lamps. Compositions needed to capture the controlled chaos of maximalism. Each image asked: does this feel like HH Firenze, or does it feel like every other boutique hotel trying to be Instagram-famous?

The Influencer Who Understood

In a world obsessed with follower counts and engagement metrics, we made a different choice. One influencer. One collaboration. One person whose personal aesthetic so naturally aligned with the hotel's soul that the content felt inevitable rather than manufactured.

She created a Reel that moved through the spaces like a love letter. A carousel post that lingered on details. Stories that captured the morning light hitting book spines just right. It wasn't about reach—it was about resonance. Her audience didn't just see a hotel; they felt an invitation into a world they recognized as their own.

The results spoke quietly but clearly: engagement increased 70%, profile visits surged, and most importantly, the followers who arrived stayed. They were the right people—design enthusiasts, maximalists, seekers of the Italian "dolce vita" who understood that more can be more when it's done with love.

A Book About Books, For a Hotel Built on Stories

HH Firenze's identity revolves around literature, around the physical presence of books as objects of beauty and meaning. So we created what felt like the only logical conclusion: the hotel's own coffee table book.

150 pages. Photographs collected over years by different photographers, each capturing fragments of the hotel's evolving story. Not a promotional brochure—a physical artifact that guests could hold, browse, lose themselves in. It sits in rooms and common spaces as both documentation and invitation, a tactile reminder that this place values beauty that you can touch, stories you can revisit.

We made it browsable online too, because sometimes people need to fall in love before they book a room.

What Changed: Numbers and Something Deeper

In four months, followers grew from 1,000 to 4,000. Low-season bookings increased 10% during Florence's coldest months when tourism traditionally slows. Profile engagement jumped 70%. These numbers matter because they represent people, real humans who discovered a space that spoke to them, who saved posts, who sent the account to friends saying "we need to stay here."

But the deeper transformation wasn't measurable in metrics. It was coherence.

For the first time, HH Firenze's digital presence felt true to its physical soul. Guests arriving after discovering the hotel on Instagram experienced recognition, not disappointment. The brand finally had a voice that matched its vision.

The Principle We Protected: Brand First, Always

Hospitality marketing often rushes toward advertising: boosted posts, paid partnerships, quick wins. But we insisted on a different sequence: build the brand identity first, then amplify it. Without coherent visual language and authentic positioning, advertising money evaporates into a void of sameness.

HH Firenze succeeded because we didn't compromise. We didn't make it minimal because minimal performs well. We didn't chase trends that would betray the hotel's essence. We simply made sure that every single image, every caption, every story honored the maximalist beauty that the property owner had spent years cultivating.

In a market saturated with beige and exposed brick, with Edison bulbs and industrial chic, maximalism became the differentiation. Abundance became strategy. Authenticity became currency.

What This Really Was

This wasn't social media management. It was an act of translation: taking a three-dimensional, sensory-rich experience and making it resonate through glass screens. It was collaboration with a property owner who knew exactly what she wanted but needed help making others see it too. It was proving that in hospitality, your brand isn't what you say about yourself; it's whether your digital presence makes people feel something before they ever arrive.

HH Firenze now exists fully, physically and digitally. The voice matches the vision. The audience understands the invitation. And somewhere in Florence, in rooms lined with books and lit with warm intention, guests arrive already knowing they're home.

This is what happens when you refuse to simplify beauty. When you trust that the right people will find you if you just show them who you really are.