Building a brand colivers love: Interview with Stefanía Noriega

Please introduce yourself and Enso Co-living’s current brand positioning.

I'm Stefanía Noriega, CMO of Enso Co-Living. I've been part of Enso for a year now, and one of my first missions here was to understand our community through data and their own feedback. With that information, we were able to understand our colivers’ needs on a deeper level and really upgrade our service with a full rebrand—and also a new website launch. 

It's been such a creative and inspired journey for me. I'm very proud of what we’ve achieved. Not only in results, but also in how much closer we've become now to our colivers, and vice versa.

Enso is all about making people feel at home. They can kick off their shoes and let city life become easier, bolder, and more connected. 

Our positioning is that we're not just renting rooms. We are also creating a lifestyle built on community, like-minded people, co-created experiences, brand ambassadors, and a true sense of belonging. As we like to say, “you do the living and we do the rest.”  

Why is having a good brand strategy so important for the coliving industry?

I would like to answer this question with another question: Why do we design brands? To connect with people, to create strong first impressions, and to build lasting relationships. 

A good brand strategy must take that into account in order to bring clarity, trust, consistency, and loyalty. When a brand truly knows its audience, it can grow into a love brand. Not just used, but embraced, repeated, and very importantly—recommended. 

The result of a good brand strategy is a brand that feels human but also solves our needs and inspires people to stay. In coliving, I think that this matters a lot because we are not just offering a product, we are shaping someone's home and daily life. 

Choosing where to live is personal and emotional at the same time. More than a service, it becomes like a community that people belong to (and some colivers will become brand ambassadors organically). 

What motivated Enso’s rebrand, and how does the new version compare to what it was before? 

We rebranded because we believe a real community is based on co-creation. Our core business was already strong, but we wanted colivers to feel even more a part of Enso. Expanding globally made it the perfect moment to pause, to listen, and to start co-creating. 

The difference between then and now is really clear. Before, we proved that our business model worked, and now we have a living identity, like our DNA. This DNA touches every single point of our journey and has shifted our direction strategically and makes people proud to belong. And today, Enso has a brand book that feels like our bible, because it aligns our culture, our visuals, and our strategies. 

Where do you see Enso Co-living in a year?

For the next year, we are really excited to engage with the world. Expansion is on the horizon with new cities to launch in, and others already on our radar including Lisbon and New York City. 

We are also actively creating and developing our own technology, envisioning a tech-savvy future for Enso. That's also the result of having a stronger community of thousands of happy colivers living with us around the world.

How did you involve residents with the branding strategy, and what feedback was most impactful?

We developed a concept named “From Coliver to CEO,” a fun experience that offered two ways for colivers to take charge. 

The first path was online through a happiness survey which we launched in three different cities here in Spain. The feedback we got helped create the voice of our community. That’s what laid the groundwork for our rebranding. 

The second path was a physical, offline experience called the CEO Playground. That was a fun event here in Barcelona where colivers got to be bosses for a day. They enjoyed playful kits to work with, they tackled group challenges. We also took Polaroid pictures with them in sunglasses pretending to be CEO rockstars. 

That event was a great way for them to share their thoughts, their real needs, their stories, and their troubles and their desires. So while they were having a blast, we went deep into their stories and conversations. 

A great example of data that we collected at that event was that—beyond having a great room—62% of them like having roommates who matched their vibe. That was the most important thing for them to have, after a great room. 

We also learned that 24% appreciated beautiful shared spaces, and 20% were in favor of extra services to make adulting easier. That concept “From Coliver to CEO” was the first time that we connected in a different way with our colivers based on the idea of co-creation. 

How do you create memorability so residents keep coming back?

Memorability is really a full cycle experience designed to create belonging, meaning our colivers feel supported every day. So how do we make that happen?

We have our community and hospitality team that is great at solving problems, while our design team creates stylish homes and inspiring workplaces—and that’s essential because 60% of our colivers work remotely. 

We also create fun events calendars to encourage shared experience and more co-creation. Colivers have this new program called “Events with Benefits,” where they can co-create events with us. This is a gamification strategy that offers them different kinds of benefits through the events that they co-create with us. This is also very important for their experience in a new city. 

And lastly, our roommate matching process ensures everyone feels comfortable and at home from day one.

What would you do differently in retrospect, as far as organizing the rebrand?

Looking back, we would have given ourselves time for internal alignment. A rebrand touches every department, and both moving fast and growing fast can make the whole experience feel very intense. 

That's why internal communication is key to being consistent. Listening to our needs, to other departments' needs, and supporting them with the right assets, materials, playbooks and strategy. That is very important, but also a big process that takes time. So it's important to be aligned throughout the whole process of rebranding.

Do you have any advice for how to structure the early stages of planning?

Well, first of all I think that we all should embrace chaos and not let it stop us. It's part of the process really. I studied fashion design as my first career, so I know creativity often starts messy before it takes shape. 

And then bring structure and define the reason for the rebrand, and what success should look like. Then it's important to set clear goals and turn that into priorities and the timeline. With a clear roadmap, you’re able to achieve those goals. 

It's also very important to include different departments and users—especially users—and make them part of it. I think that co-creation is something very very valuable and it ensures that what you’re doing will connect with the final user. Make the process aligned and focused, and don’t forget to have fun. 

How did you create internal alignment and consistency?

Our brand book really became the key piece that helped clarify the process. It helps align all the departments and keeps everyone clear on how to express the brand as something tangible. We have one language with practical examples like how Enso would say this or that, and you can give different examples that make it easier to align the teams. 

We also created a list of key assets and a timeline for each team along the coliver journey so we could deliver with the big picture in mind. Of course it takes time, but once you have the big picture for each team it pays off in the long term. 

We run workshops and onboarding sessions for new members as well. They receive the new brand book, those tone of voice examples, and the strategies that we’ve talked about here—co-creation, the “From Coliver to CEO” experience, and so on—so they can really understand what we're doing now and how we are embracing the future.

What kind of questions helped to nail down the brand identity?  

We asked big questions, philosophical questions like “Why do we exist?” “How do we want people to feel?” “What truly matters beyond having a great room?” We broke it down to things like services, flatmates, cross-sellings, events, branding—our brand colors, our slogan, and so on. The rebranding became our new DNA, how we show up everywhere. 

We listened to our colivers and then we turned their answers into data that we could act on. I think that the most powerful insights came straight from our colivers, hearing what Enso meant for their daily lives shaped our values and our tone. 

We also work with Carl Jung archetypes, mainly the Caregiver and the Explorer, which perfectly embody both support and adventure. You are moving in with strangers in coliving, which is adventurous but also should feel safe. 

For branding, those archetypes are a great way to look at it because at the end you're representing personalities. The Caregiver and the Explorer match perfectly with our philosophy and with the coliving lifestyle. 

How do you incorporate tools, technology, and partners to support brand awareness, loyalty, resident satisfaction, and trust?  

Right now, we choose tools and partners that help us stay connected with our colivers, that make communication even easier for us. The tech needs to be intuitive, human-centered, and able to grow with us—especially because we have this expansion strategy in progress.

Our resident app, Spaceflow, plays a key role. It helps us share updates, create events, and track attendance, while giving colivers the same space to engage and connect.

It's important to break down the distance between us and our colivers and feel human, feel connected. We really enjoy it when our colivers say that they relate Enso with ‘easy peasy.’ That’s the perception we aim for. 

For brand awareness, we use the platforms our audience already loves, and share content there that's genuinely useful or fun. For loyalty we collaborate with brands that we know our residents really engage with, and we also co-create experiences with them and get them involved in planning events. We try to make our events and the whole calendar resonate with our community. 

For resident satisfaction, we focus on listening and staying flexible to respond to their needs. The result has been great. We have a 4.8 out of 5 satisfaction score. We have a monthly waiting list of over 3,000 colivers, and we have 100% occupancy across 800 rooms. On social media we have higher engagement rates and smoother communication. 

To sum up, our goal is to make the experience great and consistent both online and offline.