Vibe on the menu

With over 30 franchise stores spread nationwide and further afield, News Cafe has been the subject of a carefully nurtured expansion programme. Store sites and franchisees have been chosen with an eye to maintaining the key ingredients that have made News Café a successful trendy establishment.

All this has led to the generation of a collective 'vibe', common to stores as far apart as Green Point and Benoni, but so personally perceived by the different markets they serve, as to be entirely individual to each store.

"The vibe is different things to different people, but is uncompromising in its reflection of the News Cafe brand," says Nick Eleftheriadis, Marketing Director of Fournews Developments, News Cafe's brandholder and franchisor.

Actualising the vibe has been a challenge for creative agency Cross Colours, ever since they conceived the positioning 'It's about the vibe' for News Cafe, after taking over the account towards the end of 2003. They did not want to treat its interpretation in a traditional way, and have instead chosen a more abstract manner to create and capture 'the vibe'

"Now, with customer consciousness of that elusive vibe having become so strong, we have sought to represent it with images just as intangible, yet equally powerful, to excite their taste for change," says Cross Colours Client Service Director Jeanne Walters.

In response to the challenge, the agency's Creative Director Joey Pastoll, working with her husband, photographer David, has produced iconic images reflecting images of the News Cafe experience. Each image so visceral, and intimately depicted, that it becomes potently symbolic of the vibe.

The intensely textural images, which are ultra high-resolution micro-close-ups, show the succulent bubbles on coffee, the glossy, liquid centre of a tomato, the weave of rich fabric, or the soft, ambiguous shavings of grated feta cheese. They will be used in a major print advertising campaign in glossy magazines and similar renditions for in-store plasma screens that are a feature of the newer stores.

Collectively, the photographs, each a work of art, form a holistic illustration of the vibe and begin to establish layers for the brand, that the agency and client are wanting to achieve. Individually they will no doubt trigger powerful responses from News Cafe patrons.

"The ambiguity of the images makes them open to discussion and interpretation, but the one-liner on all the advertising - Copyright the Vibe - is not," says Walters. "It's revolutionary, and represents the brand regeneration, it speaks to the core of News Cafe's appeal."

Another facet of the challenge to maintain News Cafe's edge was the need to update the logo, which had not changed since the inception of the brand. Subtle changes have been made to the time-honoured bugle logo and a new typestyle has been introduced. It is now more contemporary but still retains some tradition.