Really successful brands make a strong emotional connection with their customers which creates loyalty and repeat custom. Hospitality businesses already have a stronger positive emotional pull than say a light bulb supplier. After all restaurants and hotels are where we meet up with friends and family away from work and have some fun. But how do you create a strong brand?
Well it starts with the personality you’re trying to creating. Think of your brand as a person and you won’t go far wrong. What sort of personality fits your brand with depend on your target markets, the part of the market you wish to occupy and also what the competitors are doing. For those just starting their first restaurant the brand personality should also fit yours. It’s no good trying to establish a cool and trendy restaurant if your passion is fine dining – it just won’t have the authenticity in the delivery.
For branding clients we normally run through a long list of attributes and grade them out of 10 (10 for very applicable) to get to the essence of the brand. Ie what you want people to feel when their experience your brand. Some examples include:
Value for money
Child friendly
Sophisticated
Stylish
Trendy
Young
Professional
Casual
Ethical
Humorous
Quirky
Provence of food
Nationality (ie if you are a French restaurant how “French” do you want to be?! Subtle or in your face?)
This process helps to definite your attributes, your purpose and the strengths of the business, it also helps us to zero in on them and where they see the brand. We help them to develop certain attributes that we feel are important.
Obviously some of these words are more than just about the personality they also point to the key elements of the brand that need to be communicated throughout all the brand touch points as well as how staff speak to customers and what they dress like. Skinny jeans or shirt and tie?
One of the strongest personalities and perfect for their market is Cattle Grid. We built their website but their owner loves to Tweet – some of which you wouldn’t find on the feed of a big brand!
