Restaurant Brands

On the Brand Show this week, the Two West crew took a look at restaurant brands. A restaurant brand is a lot of different things, but above all the brand should be about food and customer service. We take a look at different examples of how restaurants do a good and not so good job of this such as, Red Robin, Planet Hollywood and Applebee’s. Believe me, there is a lot going on. So much so, we didn’t even get to all of our topics.

In our Brand Rant, we spoke about Equinox Fitness. They’ve chosen Fallon as their agency of record and their new campaign is getting all kinds of buzz. But is it all positive? Check out these ads and you be the judge. Would you know that this is an ad for a gym?























Jen Gulvik, director of marketing for Houlihan’s came on the show to discuss the payoff of re-branding themselves five years ago. Jen also gave us a teaser for their new promotion coming up in partnership with Skyy Vodka and the new Sex and the City movie. Check out the podcast to hear the interview in its entirety.

We touched on a little bit Applebee’s new branding campaign. They have changed everything – from their logo, uniforms, restaurant motif and of course, a new advertising campaign. Can all of this turn the Applebee’s brand around? We think it’s going to take more than comedian Wanda Sykes, who plays the voice of the talking apple, to bring their brand back to cool. Check out the article to find out more of what they are doing.

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Something that we didn’t get to on the show, but thought it was worth mentioning was that O’Charley’s is coming out with a new branding campaign. They needed a way to stand out from a competitive field of casual dining. They did some research and you know what they found out? Customer’s love the roll experience! It’s like we always say at Two West, you need to get to the heart of what customers think about your brand through some in-depth research. That’s what they have decided to focus their campaign on. Check out the link to the article and see their new spot.

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