Corporate Branding - Royal Holloway University

Who they are

Royal Holloway, University of London is a large higher education facility based near Egham, Surrey. It is part of the University of London, and has around 7350 students from 120 countries.

What they wanted

Royal Holloway was concerned that its seven campus outlets for their students and staff were not doing enough trade. The university's location near Egham town centre meant students were in easy reach of external catering outlets, and the campus facilities' outdated brandings were sending customers elsewhere.

The university wanted fresh new looks, and in some cases new names and offerings, to encourage students and staff to stay on-site for refreshments.

What we did

We started by researching all the outlets, as well as establishing what the students liked and disliked about each catering facility. From here, we were able to work out which outlets needed a complete redesign and which ones needed freshening up.

As well as implementing the chosen brandings across all collateral - including point of sale, menus, promotions and posters - we project managed the whole job to ensure the new branding was live before the influx of new students at the start of term.

Students were given a food guide containing offer vouchers, both highlighting the outlets and encouraging them to visit.

The different amounts of rebranding going on in each outlet ensured the job was extremely varied. Some required a new name as part of the rebrand, and in some cases we had to advise the university on each outlet's offering and what promotions it should run.

One key example was SCR, the staff canteen. Criticisms of the existing outlet included the fact the menu had become predictable. By suggesting that each day a theme - such as international day and fish day - we mixed up the week and ensured staff could enjoy different meals each week.

In other instances, the branding was relatively new and we simply had to roll it out consistently across all collateral.

And in the case of Café Jules, their on-site coffee shop, we had to give it a revolutionary make-over to allow it to compete with off-site outlets like Starbucks and Costa Coffee.