Rest + Wild founder, James, came to me at a point in the business which is becoming increasingly familiar – I call it the ‘awkward teenage’ stage. They had one location, a strong brand identity and thriving Instagram community. However, James was feeling the growing pains that come with that start-up mentality of doing it all yourself. He needed to switch his focus to finding new locations to meet the huge customer demand, so came to me for help with the brand and marketing strategy to get them to the next stage of growth.

Brand identity workshop
I started by running a brand identity workshop with James, his wife and the small ops team. We did a deep dive on the vision, mission and values of the business, inspired by James’ background and the reason he started Rest + Wild in the first place. We then layered in a review of competitors and their positioning, as well as the audiences we could identify as the main target market. This helped us to come up with some unique positioning and core principles for the business which would help us stand out from the rest of the market and connect with potential customers.

Marketing Strategy
My next step was to apply this brand bedrock to a marketing strategy. As a small business, still in its early stages, I advised focusing on owned, brand channels initially. Ensuring the revised messaging was communicated through the existing website, social media, and customer journey touch points, as well as adding some new channels into the mix – particularly email marketing and brand partnerships.

Hiring
Once the marketing strategy was in place, I supported James to hire a marketing manager to lead on the delivery of the marketing tactics and plan. Having dedicated in-house marketing resource meant Rest + Wild could branch out into more paid social media and influencer partnerships, as well as a structured multichannel campaign for the launch of their new location.

The business continues to thrive, adding a new location in 2022 and growing from 32k followers on Instagram to over 65k.