The new owners at this legendary Chelsea nightclub were keen to reinstate a sense of exclusivity and character at a club which had, for years, let standards slip. After all, this was once the glitterati’s favourite drinking den.
They asked me to produce a document that would define a vision and tone of voice for the Raffles team to adhere to. Its purpose would be to inform not only the website’s permanent literature and any future marketing materials, but on-site signage and menu copy.
Its second use would be as a reference point for Raffles’ front-of-house staff, ensuring they communicate with guests in way that upholds the nightclub’s new attitude and principles.
It was important to Raffles that I keep things simple and succinct, so I set out the brand book to cover the sections as you see them in the adjacent image.
While there’s a section dedicated to key words in the new Raffles lexicon, I decided to further convey the brand’s tone of voice by talking about what matters to it the most: music, design and fashion.
The benefit of this conceit was two fold: those reading would know how to ‘talk Raffles’ while simultaneously learning its core tenets and tastes.
The brand book is now regularly referenced by the in-house team to populate the website and publish stories on social media.
Research, research, research. There’s not much I don’t know about the club’s (colourful) history or what Chelsea was like in the Swinging Sixties!
I then went about studying some of London’s night-dwelling movers and shakers, both today and in the club’s heyday. If I knew who the club’s ‘ideal guests’ were, I could begin to lay out a manifesto that mirrored their cachet.
Elsewhere, I interviewed the club’s coolest patrons to get a feel for what they wanted, and, vitally, how the spoke. This then informed the language and tone of the brand book.
