Branding and marketing Ottawa’s first food hall and live music venue, located in the Sun Life Financial Centre in the heart of downtown Ottawa.
Ahead of its grand opening, Queen St. Fare needed to introduce an entirely new concept to Ottawa — a food hall and live music venue — to distinct audiences: young adults, downtown lunch crowd, happy hour enthusiasts, and tourists.
At the heart of our launch strategy was social media. Instagram, in particular, helped build the brand, promote events, tell Queen St. Fare’s story and engage with influencers. We also used Facebook to target a broader audience and other platforms to connect with media and the downtown lunch crowd.
Cyan developed the name and an industrial Art Deco-inspired brand identity, directed professional food photography with a leading local photographer, built a new website, launched an Instagram-led social and email strategy, produced a sizzle video, and secured media and influencer coverage across Ottawa’s major outlets.
We developed a look and feel for the brand that echoed elements of industrial Art Deco design and built the identity around the concept of transportation and forward movement. We also developed a brand personality and voice that was genuine, down to earth and approachable.
We produced a short, minute-long sizzle video to feature vendors and to support the launch. As a result, this helped in presenting the brand to our target audience while educating the public about the concept of a food hall.
The venue’s Instagram following grew from zero to over 3,000 in six weeks with no paid media spend, the website drew more than 20,000 visitors in its first two months, and the launch earned coverage in nearly every major Ottawa outlet, including Apt613, Narcity, Ottawa Business Journal (OBJ), Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa Life Magazine, Ottawa Magazine and Ottawa Tourism.
We have more recently continued working with QSF on the refresh of their website and migration to the WordPress CMS while still maintaining their art-deco theme.
The response from the public to Queen St. Fare has been fantastic. Most people can’t believe how amazing it is for Ottawa to have a project like this happening here. Every element was communicated very well… and it was quite evident that this was a team approach by everyone at Cyan.
Sean O’Sullivan
Vice-President & General Manager
BGO, Queen St. Fare
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