This Place Is Screwed, And It's Totally Their Fault

This is Atti Square

If it weren’t for the Shawarma board in the background, you’d call it a butcher shop at first glance.

But it’s not. It’s a Shawarma joint.

And that is exactly the problem we’re trying to solve today - how do you make your brand instantly recognizable from afar, without people associating it with something else.

Let’s talk about Atti Square for a moment:

• Fast food joint

• Has 14 locations in Chennai

• All of their locations have the same brand language as the picture above.

We stalked this branch for an hour. Roughly 5-10 customers on a busy Sunday evening. Could need some help.

While there’s a lot of things you can do to pump that number up, you cannot really make it stick unless you’ve got the fundamentals right - a few key pillars that your business most definitely needs to be able to call itself a brand in its industry.

One of those pillars is positioning, and many take branding and positioning lightly - a few colors here, copy what works there, and there you have it. Right?

Not exactly.

First, let’s try and understand what a successful brand in the fast-food space looks like

[cue the McDonald’s tune]

The fast food industry uses yellow and red because it works. It triggers excitement and it grabs attention. Go back to the first image and see if Atti Square has any red mixed in?

Contrast to this is Yaghma Kebabs. Their use of red and yellow and fused with the theme of mid-eastern cuisine just works. You don’t spend twenty minutes thinking of what kind of restaurant this is.

Now not every one needs to follow this, and such rules are more flexible and subject to your own experience.

But when done wrong, it will never yield the end result you want, which is brand recollection

You want people to be able to look at your food chains in one glance and go “Oh, yeah that place, they’re pretty good. I didn’t know they had a branch here, that’s nice“

One of the reasons why Wow Momo’s brand is so recognizable is because of this

• There’s clear thought that’s gone into the design and brand language

• It’s recognizable from the distance, so there’s attention hooks

• It is everywhere! So you keep getting brand recall

Another brand that’s growing fast, just not at the scale of Wow Momos (yet), is Bao Bao

Same strong design fundamentals, good brand recall potential (do not underestimate mascots).

Now, Atti Square has 14 outlets!! That’s crazy. It has grown really well, and while that may be due to a few factors (Franchising craze in India is at an all-time high), they have the potential to grow much faster.

Just need to make sure the customers recall Atti Square :)

If you liked this post, lemme know, people. Just like Rahul here. Gives me extra motivation to keep writing :)