Project Overview
YQme (pronounced Why-Queue-Me) is an online ordering platform that allows a café or restaurant to have their own app, in their own brand, and build their own customer database. YQme gives the power back to small business by helping them to grow their own business and build more customer loyalty. As a self-funded technology start-up, YQme had a strong product created by talented developers. What it lacked was a compelling and engaging brand to take to market.
Designer Rice partnered with YQme to craft the brand strategy, develop key messages, design the brand identity and all brand assets (from corporate stationery to marketing collateral, app interface to website).
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Brent Rice, Strategy / Creative
Libby Cunniffe, Designer
Poppy Rodrigues, Designer
Gabriel Knowles, Developer
Project Brief
The online ordering market is dominated by directory services such as UberEats, Deliveroo, and Menulog. These services take huge commissions from small businesses (sometimes up to 35%), they promote loyalty to their app versus the restaurant, and they own / guard all of the customer data. Restaurant owners have no visibility of who their best customers are via these apps. Yet most cafes and restaurant owners feel bound to these directory services, and are unaware of alternate options.
In contrast, YQme is an ordering platform that allows a café or restaurant to have their own app, in their own brand, and build their own customer database. All at super low commission.
The brief was to create a brand that helped them:
• Clearly communicate the benefits of YQme as a business building and marketing tool;
• Engage Restaurant owners (and their customers) across multiple channels; and
• Position the brand away from the directory services, whilst also being able to co-exist with them.
Project Innovation/Need
We embarked on a brand development programme that included client workshops, competitive analysis, qualitative research and insight discovery. The brand driver became ‘Serve Better’ – because YQme is dedicated to serving small business better, serving the community better, and empowering cafes and restaurants to serve their customers better. This was received so well it was also adopted as the customer facing tagline.
The brand identity was designed as a celebration of different cultures and tastes. We created a simple wordmark that clearly communicates the name of the technology platform in a positive and engaging way, but also represents the brand’s flexibility and adaptation to the businesses it serves.
YQme is about diverse flavours and tastes. But more than this, in this era of abundance, choice and convenience at your fingertips, YQme celebrates the idea of regular customers, favourite restaurants and favourite dishes.
Design Challenge
The primary challenge: design a brand for a technology platform that is designed to be white labelled. Much discussion was had around the value of a brand, how far we should take it, and if a professional, corporate logo would suffice. Our approach was to inject the brand with loads of personality, playfulness, confidence and expertise –to aid the sales and marketing process. We wanted to engage restaurant owners who were already wooed by world-leading brands like Uber, and create an aspirational brand that helped open them up to the idea of having their own app.
Other challenges included:
How do we take a complex system, and make it easy to understand and easy to get involved? To address this, we worked closely with the YQme team to help explain how it works, simplify the on-boarding process, outline customer benefits and design the app interface.
As an agency, how do we advise a small start-up of primarily developers? There is no-one who knows their product like they do. We acknowledged that early on, and collaborated with them throughout the process.
How does YQme go up against ordering app giants UberEats and Deliveroo – with millions raised in venture capital? The answer is they don’t. We sought to co-exist early and use competitor orders as customer marketing opportunities. We tactfully put a spotlight on the issues facing the industry, and helped YQme stay true to their ‘Serve Better’ promise.
Effectiveness
The new YQme brand has only launched recently, and since then YQme has seen a marked increase in inbound enquires – via website enquires, Instagram and Facebook – and a spike in new customer sign-ups. This will only continue to increase as the shift away from directory giants (UberEats, Deliveroo) continues.
And more importantly at this stage of the rebrand, the new identity has
• aligned key team members on the company’s purpose and offering;
• generated excitement for the future;
• aided in sales and marketing efforts; and
• helped stimulate discussion in the industry about the effects of giants like UberEats.
“The team love the new brand and we are really proud of it. It’s positive, friendly and inclusive, and tactfully challenges our competitors. It’s really given us the confidence to build a content platform around it, and focus more on sales and marketing.” – Stephen Teudt, Founder and Director
Graphic Design - Identity and Branding - Tech
This award celebrates creative and innovative design in the traditional or digital visual representation of ideas and messages. Consideration given to clarity of communication and the matching information style to audience.
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