Overview

Gusto is a small national chain of Italian inspired cafe restaurants. The senior leadership team wanted to expand and evolve the business. New sites had been identified and they brought with them the opportunity to evolve and update the brand, developing a new style of Gusto.

We were asked to develop the brand – building upon the established values, creating a strong, visual experience that would be memorable.

Customer experience and event management

Working alongside the operations and marketing teams we undertook a full brand review, looking at the existing customers habits and preferences to confirm the direction of travel for the brand.

Gusto has a strong reputation for customer events, with a vibrant calendar of activities held every week within each location, these included live music, fund raisers, pampering experiences, tastings and fashion, so the brand needed to be versatile.

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Brand development and management

Our research indicated a strong connection with cafe nostalgia and culture of the early twentieth century. People connected quicker to visuals containing these ‘classic’ cafe culture images. Within this category there was a notable connection to film and fashion, with a perception of greater sophistication being influenced by the art and architecture of this period.

Our role was to create a brand identity that would play up all the strengths of Italian cafe nostalgia, but the client wanted us to bring with it a contemporary design edge, something that would make it stand out. Enter the ‘echo of deco’, our term for a design look and feel that fused old and new. Something that evolved during the course of the project to become the Gusto ‘heart’ brand.

Marketing communications

Having worked with the existing brand for a couple of years prior to the development of the new identity, we had a clear understanding of the existing communication channels, and took the update as an opportunity to suggest some new ideas that would compliment the existing delivery.

As we’ve already mentioned, each Gusto restaurant has a vibrant calendar of activities throughout the year, historically these have been shared using digital channels, with a heavy emphasis on social.

We felt that there was an opportunity to bring more of the feel of these communications into the units themselves through a series of interior tweaks and adjustments that would see a greater visual consistency between what customers saw online and the in-person experience.

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Direct mail

In addition to the digital activities a series of teasers, event calendars and flyers for each of the local restaurant’s activities were produced. These focused on holiday periods – Easter, Summer and Christmas/New Year. They were targeted within the local area of each unit, using a series of postcard mailings.

Reputation management and public relations

We worked with the Gusto operations team to support their event calendars for each unit. This centralisation of communications ensured a consistent brand experience across a wide geographic area.

Design

The Gusto ‘heart’ brand included numerous illustrations, patterns and photographic assets.

The visual brand feel of every Gusto communication was very important to the client. We developed both a digital and print guide for materials and finishes that were aligned to the aesthetic of the units and their surroundings.

These materials included interior and exterior signage, menus and interior design suggestions including large format graphics and framed art.

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