About brands
Brands matter to customers, working as a kind of shorthand signal for quality and as an endorsement of standards. The logo on a product is a visual device which conveys meaning and is an important message influencing customer spending behaviour.

The owners and creators of brands understand the emotional power of such consumer behaviour and through persuasive advertising imagery can press the buttons to stimulate consumption of the product.

Brand imagery in effect carries encoded messages. A brand has its own personality, characteristics and qualities which the consumer trusts and can identify with. So, there is an unwritten contract between consumer and brand owner which states that the supplier agrees to maintain (or improve) the quality of his products or services. If he does not manage to do this, he can expect his disappointed customers to move to a competitor.

Brands can be viewed as a ‘snapshot’, showing consumer tastes at that moment in time. Tastes change and consumers are always seeking new experiences so a brand cannot afford to stand still for long. Many leading brand names from 30 years ago no longer exist. The enduring brands are continually evolving, injecting new life and energy into the products and keeping the brand fresh in the mind of the customer.

So, brand managers must keep one eye on their own business, but also keep looking at what the market is looking for and what the competition is offering.

Food and Beverage brands (F&B)
The quality of a service however, is more difficult to standardize than it is for a mass-produced artefact. In a restaurant or hotel, the service can, potentially, vary from day to day. The food in a restaurant is dependent on the freshness and quality of raw materials as well as the preparation and presentation of the finished dishes.

But it is not just the quality of the food; consumers are looking for the quality of experience in a restaurant, hotel or bar. They expect to find a place where they will meet like-minded individuals.

The provider of such a place must therefore focus on issues such as;

• Differentiation of the environment
• Quality and consistency of the product
• Quality and consistency of service
• Consistency of pricing (within reasonable geographic parameters)
• Convenience of site location

We believe that the design of the interior environment is an important part of the whole customer experience. The interior must be a fusion of the aspirational environment demanded by the customer, incorporating the practical needs of the operator, along with the presentational needs of the product itself.

Naturally, the practical, operational issues should dictate the layout of a hotel, restaurant, café or bar. This may reveal limitations for the layout of the chosen site.

The three dimensional environment which builds from the plan, is the opportunity to use colour, from and texture to excite the visual senses. The quality of the 3D design creates a ‘personality’ for the functional plan.

So, whether starting from a blank page or from an existing business, we help our clients to develop a new brand experience. We will develop a design strategy; producing an individual interior solution and corporate identity which supports the positioning of the concept.

Our philosophy is, where it is appropriate, to build both flexibility and scalability into our solutions. We consider the future directions that the business can take and try to anticipate the need to develop brand diffusion lines.

We look forward to meeting you and discussing your project.

David Kaye MA MBA
Director

Some of our total brand development project clients include;
Compass Group PLC – Granada PLC – Fazer Amica