CASE STUDY
O’Charley’s
Business Situation:
Out-resourced and out-sized by larger national competitors, O’Charley’s sought to re-position itself for elusive success across its 230 locations in a challenged, varied-menu casual dining category.
A new brand positioning would be expected to affect the entire business, spanning segmentation, location branding, operations/training, food development, online, direct/database marketing, media, externalized marketing and customer relationship marketing.
Alongside numerous internal adjustments, our task was to bring a brand idea to the table that would, in turn, do the same with new, lapsed and current guests.
The idea would need to carve out relevant, challenger brand space for this one-time, regional favorite in an increasingly complex footprint of both Core and Expansion market locations.
Strategic Insight:
Through extensive primary research, ethnographic journaling and data analytics, numerous insights into the assignment were uncovered.
A custom segmentation was created, identifying the brand’s unique market situation in its varying geographic types.
A customer insights model was developed, leading to four priority customer target segments.
A guest satisfaction: price gap: traffic: margin analysis was conducted to segment the system and focus media spending.
A store retrofit, remodel and future prototype strategy was developed to differentiate the on-premise O’Charley’s experience.
Finally, a cultural truth about O’Charley’s soul, purpose, flavor and guest promise was uncovered through its famous Unsliceably Soft Rolls.
Already at the center of the guest’s perception of and experience with the brand, the roll would also gain its place at the center of the brand’s communications, training, personnel recruitment, E-Club database, digital offerings, externalized communications and more.
Brand Fluency
Brand: O’Charley’s
Brand What: Good Food. Good Times.
Brand Why: Creating the feeling of a favorite local place.
Brand Promise: Good food. Good times. It all starts with the rolls.
Results:
Having seen the O’Charley’s concept grow from 50 to 230+ locations over the course of our relationship, the Rolls brand effort also has more recently resulted in:
The strongest comp sales quarter in a three-year period.
A +3% increase in system sales in on-air weeks versus off.
A +4.8% increase in new broadcast markets in on-air weeks versus off.
A +5% increase in 58% of total system markets in on-air weeks versus off.
Securing 1,000,000 unique E-Club customer database names over a 14-month period.
A +5 point upward trend in Company guest satisfaction scores, systemwide.
Campaign:
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