Famous Dave's

Refreshing the voice of an established brand

Role: Creative and writer

Famous Dave’s needed an image overhaul. When it came to speaking to potential new customers, they had no credibility. But even when it came to their loyalists, they’d made some pretty major mistakes that had cost them their reputation for quality. They wanted a new look and brand tone that could help them get back to what they were famous for.

For a brand that’s less than 25 years old, Famous Dave’s was leaning hard on heritage. They were steeped deeply in the down-home authenticity obsession of barbecue tradition, which was an element that, in addition to their own established slogans, sentiments, and tone, was pushing them into a niche that was getting smaller and less defensible as the years went on.

The reality was that their heritage and their tone didn’t really match. What they needed was a way to take what was great about the culture of barbecue and make it feel applicable to and credible for a nationwide organization of franchises.

As part of that challenge, my team and I also had to contend with making not only corporate leadership happy, but also with pleasing a diverse group of franchisees that stretched from New York to L.A. to Puerto Rico. And, with the added elements of ever-changing top leadership and recent failed brand overhauls, there was a lot riding on what we created.

To help the brand rediscover who it really was, I worked with a small team of leadership and franchisees to explore the elements of the brand’s personality: what was at the heart of who they were, what they needed to keep, and what they could explore to move into the future.

Together, along with design explorations, mission statement writing, and activations planning, we created a new personality and a new tone that maintained the brand’s deep ties to heritage and barbecue, but created a sense of welcome, fun, and experimentation.