Our Work / Matt the Thresher

Rebranding a Highly Regarded Inn with over 30 years of Custom

The Background

Matt The Thresher has two distinct locations in Ireland; it’s original gastropub located in Birdhill, Tipperary and its Seafood Bar and Grill located in Lower Pembroke Street, Dublin 2. Each location has a different experience, customer demographic and offering.

The business has a vast amount of brand equity that spans over 30 years of custom. It is a well-established, highly regarded brand with a solid base of loyal customers.

The Brief

We were challenged with conducting market and customer research for the Birdhill location and developing its new brand positioning. Once the brand strategy was clear, we designed a distinct brand identity that was similar in look & feel to it’s Dublin counterpart, but different in its categorisation.

Once the brand strategy & design was approved, we activated the brand’s look & feel across online and print brand touchpoints. Subsequently, we developed a marketing strategy to achieve set business objectives.

Research & Insights

Extensive customer research was conducted which unearthed a number of the following key insights:

Location: it is conveniently situated within Ireland’s tidiest town on a heavily used road network; customers are frequently stopping over when travelling west or east of Tipperary.

Food: A different menu to others; wider choice.

Service: staff treat customers with a personal touch.

Atmosphere: warm family feeling.

Brand Strategy

Brand Naming & Positioning

Matt The Threshers Inn

Birdhill

Est. 1984

We believe Matt The Threshers is a key landmark in Birdhill and is very much a part of tapestry and charm of Ireland’s Tidiest Town. We recommended retaining ‘Birdhill’ in the brand’s descriptor; as it communicates a sense of provenance.

As the business will expand its offering to include accommodation, we recommended categorising the brand as an ‘Inn’, synonymous with quaint villages in the Cotswolds. An Inn is defined as “a house providing accommodation, food, and drink.”

By very definition, Birdhill fits the bill in terms of it being a stop-over for the weary traveller and bearing in mind future for expansion into accommodation. With this underlying reasoning, we proposed the use of the word ‘Inn’ within the brand identity at Birdhill.

Brand Identity Design

We recommended dropping the image of Matt The Thresher because to date, all preexisting brand equity has been built in the name. The image added another visual element to the brand identity that would distract customers from the brand’s new ‘inn’ repositioning.