Engaging People with the Authentic Brand Story - Sarah Mak, News Release
201610 Marketing Magazine full issue
1. MARKETING OCTOBER | NOVEMBER 2016
Whatmakesa
manabrand?
He’s a restaurateur, a businessman, a mentor and the only chef
we could find whose food is eaten on planes, trains, ships and
land. Natasha Menon talks us through the project to document
and formalise a brand inextricably linked to the identity of its
founder. By Peter Roper.
22 BRAND
T
heuncheckedgrowthofLukeMangan’sempire
over the last 10 years left the company with an
amazing array of feathers in its chef’s hat, but
the brand with a lack of strategic direction and
consistency and clarity of brand positioning
and communication.
The business was performing exceptionally well finan-
cially,butmarketingandcommunicationsmanagerNatasha
Menon saw there was an issue with recall and recognition,
and an opportunity to take Luke Mangan and Co from an
entrepreneurially-built enterprise to a unified brand that
could be a platform for further growth.
Menon wanted to tell the story, not of Mangan as a chef,
but of Mangan as the man wearing a multitude of different
hats: a restaurateur, businessman and mentor.
The Luke Mangan brand, it should be prefaced, can be
split into four areas, or the ‘four main meals’ as they’ve been
affectionately titled:
partnerships: with P&O Cruises, Virgin Australia,
Hilton Hotels and Eastern Oriental Rail,
restaurants: Glass Sydney and Mojo Sydney, Salt grill
restaurants in Surfers Paradise, Jakarta and Singapore, a
SalttapasandwinebarinSingapore,SaltandWorldWine
BarinTokyo,AmillaFushiandFinolhuintheMaldives,
providore: a range of products, including gifts and
vouchers, food products and experiences, and
development: the arm including the Inspired Series
education program and the Appetite for Excellence
Awards.
Menonremembersissueswith‘recallandrecognition’of
the brand, although not necessarily Mangan’s name. “People
could recall his name, but due to this extensive amount of
growth,theycouldn’trememberwhereitwasassociated,”she
says. “It was either ‘Luke Mangan, the Virgin Australia resi-
dent chef’ or ‘Luke Mangan, the P&O cruise ship guy’.”
The brand, which has seen Mangan become the first ever
chefwithproductsonplanes,trains,shipsandshoreisspread
overfivecontinents,19restaurants,ahandfulofpartnerships
and more. It was a global entity in need of brand loyalty.
The ensuing implementation of brand unity across half
the globe was a monumental task that took 12 months and
involved asking what staff, partners and guests thought
aboutMangantheman,totryandascertainanddefineLuke
Mangan the brand.
The brand strategy work undertaken over the last 12
months was planned out and broken into six parts.
redevelopment of brand strategy,
redevelopment of marketing communications strategy,
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3. marketingmag.com.au
MARKETING OCTOBER | NOVEMBER 2016
24 BRAND
was this was going to be a brand positioning strategy that
wasgoingtoleadhiswholebusinessstrategyaswell,because
he’d never had that defined,” explains Menon.
Unitingastaffofhundredsofchefs,waitstaffandopera-
tions staff all over the world, to build a brand to create brand
loyalty, would be no mean feat. A lot of responses, Menon
recalls, were along the lines of ‘brand loyalty? What’s this
jargon? What’s this marketing girl talking about?’
A series of brand guidelines were developed, which,
when followed, would align a restaurant team with the Luke
Mangan and Co brand image. The problem with this, was
that ‘chefs don’t read brand guidelines’. So how would they
go about producing brand guidelines that would cut through
thescepticismofthechefs?Simple.Theyputtheminahandy
document entitled, ‘Chefs don’t read brand guidelines’.
They also created a new range of websites for each arm
of the business, each conforming to the new brand identity
as outlined in the guidelines. This was a “beast” of an under-
taking, says Menon.
“What we wanted the experience to showcase on the
website was to reflect Luke as an individual. The tone of
voice, the direction of how and what imagery we use was
very much driven by him.”
redevelopment of digital strategy,
business development,
internal marketing/organisational restructure, and
PR and communications strategy for new brand posi-
tion/ brand refresh – the search for Australia’s biggest
foodie.
After speaking to dozens of people, “from wait staff to
senior execs, to current partners”, a pattern began to emerge.
The pattern was “a very strong sense of loyalty” associ-
ated with Mangan that, “you don’t generally associate with
chefs,” Menon says.
So the brand image, much like Mangan’s character,
would encompass loyalty, cooperation and relationships.
Mangan’s strength is building and cultivating relationships;
so each of these points would be focused on in terms of rela-
tionships – with partners, producers, ingredients, and the
team of up-and-coming talent and staff.
“Relationships may be a key ingredient to our business
success, but it only actually works because of our team.
Having good food, good wine and, most importantly, a really
good time is what we’re all about, and what we believe every
dining experience should be,” says an inspirational Mangan
quote in the brand outlines.
The venture was, says Menon “much more than just
publicity”; it was truly around building a business, much
more so than when chefs usually hire marketers to promote
their own brand image. “What was interesting about Luke’s
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4. @marketingmag
THE IDENTITY ISSUE
Social media was also a heavily utilised tool in the estab-
lishment of the brand identity, because, says Menon, “It’s
the most reactive base for us to communicate with our
customers,” adding, “[it’s] a huge part, an area we are now
looking to continue, evolve and grow.”
Partnership contracts form some of the brand’s biggest
ventures, and Mangan takes an active role in building and
nurturing them all. “A word Luke refuses to use is 'consul-
tant',” says Menon. “It’s purely because his belief is that a
consultant is somebody that consults, but is not involved.
We really position our brand as an extension of their team.”
With Virgin Australia, a dedicated team defines and
specifies the business class food and beverage menu. “A full
service experience,” says Menon. “In a communications
context, we create a restaurant experience in the sky.”
The partnership with P&O Cruises sees a sole Salt grill
restaurant on five of the P&O Cruise ships, each run by the
internal Luke Mangan and Co team.
The partnerships have been a success to date, and the
brand consolidation has been successful in promoting and
engaging new partnerships. The partnership with Eastern
and Oriental Express is an example of one of the “great
wins that have come off the back of” the brand strategy, says
Menon. It sees the brand add the ‘train’ stamp to its ‘planes,
trains, ships, shore’ conquest, opening a Salt grill on ‘Asia’s
most luxurious train’. Mangan also acts as an ambassador
for Tourism Australia, where he sits on an advisory board
with the likes of Donna Hay and Peter Gilmore.
The latest aspect of this enormous brand development
projectisthesearchfora‘CEO’,aculinaryexperienceofficer.
Operating in October after an applications and three-
month shortlisting project, it essentially sought to find “one
individual that encapsulates the same passion and love for
food, wine and great times” of the Luke Mangan brand. The
shortlist process involved engagement with all the brand’s
partner companies, involving them on the panel discussion
to narrow the running down to about eight to 10 candidates,
“but maybe a bit more,” says Menon, before mentioning over
4000 people applied for the position.
For the month of October, the selected candidate will
be trained up by Tourism Australia’s social media team,
undergo a three-and-a-half-week trip to develop content
for Luke Mangan channels, go on the inaugural Eastern
Oriental Express journey and attend two new restaurant
launches in Japan.
“Essentially, they’ll be an ambassador [for] our busi-
ness,” says Menon. The idea of such a role was in answer
to the question of “how do we get this message out there
without talking a whole heap of marketing jargon,” she says.
Choosing a brand ambassador gave a “sense of accessi-
bility” to the project, and the fact that these days ‘everyone’s
a foodie’ makes for a highly engaged audience on social.
“It’s really for somebody that wants to put their name
in front of some quite influential figures within the food
and beverage scene across Australia and the travel scene,”
explains Menon.
A word Luke
refuses to use
is 'consultant',
his belief is that
a consultant is
somebody that
consults, but is
not involved. We
really position
our brand as an
extension of their
team.
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5. marketingmag.com.au
26 BRAND
MARKETING OCTOBER | NOVEMBER 2016
Another aspect of the rebrand was the part development/
part redevelopment of the Luke Mangan four squares brand
logo. Prior to Menon’s involvement, the “meaningless” four
squares were everywhere.
“One of the first jobs I had to do,” recalls Menon, was
to go to every one of the company’s restaurants, picking
up every piece of collateral each restaurant had, to get
a better idea of how it was being used in different ways.
It was a “horrifically painful” exercise, she says. “It was
being used as a diamond, as a shape, as this, as that, as one
square or two.”
This liberal and varying use of the four squares brand
logo is but another example of the “inconsistency and lack
of clarity” surrounding the Luke Mangan empire’s brand
before this undertaking.
Regardless of how Menon felt about the four squares at
that time, the idea was not to “shift too far” from this original
logo from a creative perspective. Instead the decision was
made to embrace, perfect and align the four squares to a
uniform design and use across the whole brand.
Essentially, the task was to ‘reverse engineer’ a meaning
onto them. The “sea, sky, rail and shore” quadrifecta or
the company’s four arms of “partnerships, restaurants,
Providore Range and development” are both offered up by
Menonaspotentialideasforwhatthesquarescouldrepresent.
The Luke Mangan (non) brand guidelines show just
how strictly the brand now uses the four squares across
letterheads, business cards, email signatures, Providore
Range packaging, menus and online.
The rapid growth also meant the management hier-
archy lacked structure. “There was Luke, and there were 700
people underneath him,” says Menon. Building a manage-
mentstructurefromthegroundupmadeiteasiertoenvision
how “a business strategy could evolve up through this”.
Communicating the structure and unified brand
strategy began at the “troop level”. “They’re the core of our
business,” says Menon, “the bread and butter of any service
related team.” After this were the four lines of the business,
each of which now has its own head.
If anything, the new master brand identity helps
Mangan and Co make operational and partnership deci-
sions. “Having a clearly defined brand position enables us
to decide if we’re going to partner with somebody, or if we’re
going to open a restaurant. Are the audience who come to
eat at the restaurant the type of people who’ll appreciate
our brand? Or if it’s a partner, is this the sort of partnership
where we’ll equally benefit one another?” says Menon.
“Before, we never had that sounding board to check. But
now, we’re able to define and specify the direction we need
to keep targeting.”
For Menon it’s been a thoroughly rewarding experience.
“From a marketing perspective, the rewarding compo-
nent is walking into a business that doesn’t necessarily
understand the value of what marketing and communica-
tions can do, and then shifting the angle to focus marketing
and communications for a very centric focus in decision-
making processes.”
“It’s blown my mind,” she says.
The brand is spread
over five continents, 19
restaurants, a handful of
partnerships and more. It
was a global entity in need
of brand loyalty.
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