Here’s What a Flawless Branding Campaign on Instagram Looks Like
A consistent, non-commercial aesthetic is the foundation of most great Instagram branding campaigns.
In this post, we’ll take a look at the Instagram account of a little-known lifestyle hospitality startup at the forefront of Instagram branding, and discover just what makes their content so effective.
Urban Cowboy B&B manages boutique lodging properties in Brooklyn and Nashville. The company relies on Instagram as its primary marketing platform to introduce the brand to new customers.
A Consistent Instagram Aesthetic

Urban Cowboy is careful to make sure that the photos they publish on Instagram adhere to a consistent aesthetic framework. The result is an Instagram account that doubles as an art feed. The company attracts an audience eager to consume the brand’s marketing content based on its artistic merit alone.
This art-before-commerce mentality prioritizes delighting the account follower over the long-term ahead of the immediate promotional needs of the company. Note that the account manager is savvy enough not to muddy the aesthetic with PR announcements or commercial offers.
A Defined and Unvarying Palette

If it’s not already obvious, the Urban Cowboy Instagram account sticks to a well defined palette of neutral tones. I’ve averaged the colors of their recent Instagram posts and posted the result above to underscore the point.
The colors match across the entire account. Urban Cowboy is aware that if you follow its brand on Instagram, you’re following a signature aesthetic. The company’s content is consistent in theme and colors.
Alternating Compositions

In my previous post, I highlighted how composition is one of the core elements of a compelling and polished Instagram brand aesthetic. Urban Cowboy is particularly deft at using composition to make their photographs memorable.
But the company also takes things one step further. As the composition outlines in the figure above demonstrate, Urban Cowboy likes to introduce a variety of compositional themes — squares, circles, triangles and diamonds — alternating among the different forms to make sure that the account remains visually interesting.
Elevated Engagement

The stats bear out that Urban Cowboy punches way above its weight when it comes to Instagram branding. This is a company that manages a total of 12 rooms across two cities! That’s a tiny number in the world of branded hospitality. Yet Urban Cowboy’s Instagram audience exceeds 75,000 followers and typically produces 2000 engagements per post.
To put those numbers into perspective, Urban Cowboy’s audience reaches 3X the scale and produces 3X the engagement per user of the audience that follows the Delano Hotel, the famous 194-room property in South Beach. The Delano, whose Instagram content is by comparison more generic and less aesthetically consistent than Urban Cowboy’s, typically receives just 200 engagements per post.
It’s clear that Urban Cowboy’s Instagram production is a significant branding achievement, given the scale and resources of the operation. If you manage branding or digital marketing for a lifestyle brand, it’s worth it to keep an eye on what this nimble startup is doing on Instagram and other platforms.
