B@W #1 -- Moyo

Moyo is all about brand immersion.

From the moment you arrive at one of the four Moyo restaurants located in Johannesburg and Cape Town, the brand embraces all of your senses: the smells and tastes of diverse African cuisine, the sounds of live African music as well as the unique African design of the restaurants with their abundance of copper, wood and mosaics.

The restaurant just outside Cape Town, pictured above, is located on the grounds of a wine estate with guests able to dine in tents or on wooden platforms erected in the trees.

Experiencing the brand does not end with the food and ambience. Staff paint traditional African patterns on the faces of guests who are also welcome to join in the dancing and music of performers wandering between tables.

Whenever I come across a person who has dined at Moyo (Moyo is a loose translation of the Swahili word for soul) they inevitably first talk about the unique experience of eating at Moyo and then the excellent food.

As more marketers wake up to the fact that brands need to connect to as many senses as possible (a significant deal of the waking up is thanks to Martin Lindstrom’s book Brand Sense and his accompanying world tour), Moyo stands out as an example of how to do it right.

Comments

[mike]

Hey Patrick - Nice feature on Moyo. I wish I could echo your sentiments, but my (limited) experience of Moyo, Zoo Lake JHB, has been pretty negative. I recently wrote about it in contrast to an experience I had at an obscure, little-known restaurant on the KZN North Coast (have sent you a trackback).

Fantastic blog, btw.

[Patrick Collings]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for your comment and I'm glad you are enjoying the blog. Moyo, like all operations with multiple geographic presences, needs to ensure consistency of service otherwise they damage the brand. I spoke about the need for consistency in a post last August titled Build The Rituals. Another factor that organizations often fail to take into account is the capacity to deliver: once an organization has set a standard or promised something, it needs to ensure that it has the resources and skills to ensure constant delivery where ever people experience the brand. I blogged on this in a post titled Below The Pyramid. Both posts can be found under the Brand Think heading in the right column of my blog.

Regards,
Patrick