GROWING PAINS AND “BRANDITIS”
With humble beginnings as a small side-business in Northern Chicago in 1980, Catering by Michaels has since grown into an industry-leading, award-winning special event catering company. Their unique approach and attention to detail has awarded them the opportunity to cater the NFL Draft, Lollapalooza, and many other high-profile Chicagoland events. Over time, this rapid growth led to a condition we call “branditis.” Separate brands began emerging for different divisions without any collective cohesion. Before long, they had four independent brands under one roof that didn’t relate to each other visually.
TOGETHER AS ONE CATERING BRAND
With a disconnected and outdated family of brands, Catering by Michaels sought the advice of Album as a strategic and creative partner. We consolidated the five brands into a single cohesive brand with a modern and sophisticated identity that pays homage to their history, but points to their fierce creative drive to be innovative and current. With a new identity, we rebranded all touch points (social media, email, collateral, menus, delivery vehicles and more), designed, built and wrote the content for a new website with a completely restructured user experience, and provided creative copywriting and consulting across the entire brand platform.
IMMEDIATE IMPACT
The response from customers and partners was overwhelmingly positive. Website and phone leads were better qualified and increased significantly. Above all, the first year saw a 17% jump in gross sales.
Website metrics saw a dramatic improvement, with more than double the session traffic, a 75% increase in session duration, and a 156% increase in page views year over year. Following the rebrand, Album continued to support growth with creativity and content creation — crucial for any successful catering brand.
