TGI Fridays, the American-inspired cocktail and restaurant chain, and brand building agency Boldspace, recently launched TGI’s branding revamp. The company is reinstating ‘TGI’ into its name, after the UK business rebranded to ‘Fridays’ back in 2020.
The reversion reflects the brands recognition of its important history and heritage as an important part of their ongoing legacy and story. The revamp news also brings with it new logos and designs across TGI Fridays online site and in store, right down to menus that are currently being rolled out across the UK.
This name shift follows on from TGI Fridays’ latest brand campaign Show Your Stripes – which launched last year and saw the famous TGI Fridays stripes evolve from a symbol of heritage to one of self-expression, encouraging guests to show their stripes and feel confident about being their true selves. It marked a significant stride forward in the brand’s overall revamp and repositioning, with its trademark stripes taking on a new meaning.
To learn more about the rebrand, we spoke to Boldspace Co-CEO Nick Ford-Young and Art Director Yuko Kondo to go behind the brand.
What was the brief for the rebrand?
- Nick Ford-Young, Co-CEO at Boldspace
To make Fridays and ‘That Fridays Feeling’ relevant again in the modern day through a repositioning and rebranding.
How did the initial pitch/brainstorming phase go?
- Nick Ford-Young, Co-CEO at Boldspace
The existing heritage, distinctiveness and recognition of the TGI Fridays brand globally was an incredible starting point for us to work with.
The initial brainstorming looked at what we simply had to retain vs the elements we needed to either bring back or update.
This was led by a positioning (‘Come as you are’) that related the liberating benefits that TGI Fridays had always stood for with the mindsets of a diverse audience, as well as an updated take on what ‘celebration’ means to people today.
Describe the purpose of the brand and its target audience
- Nick Ford-Young, Co-CEO at Boldspace
The brand purpose is simply ‘To give every one of our guests That Fridays Feeling’, but building on that, to define how TGI Fridays delivers this, the brand mission is ‘to be the highlight of the week through an uplifting atmosphere, quality cocktails and food, and a generosity of spirit that makes every customer feel they can be their true self.’
The existing target audience had been young families, and those who remembered the brand’s heyday, but this rebrand was part of a conscious effort to also address an emerging younger audience - those discovering TGI Fridays almost for the first time, with no conceptions, misconceptions, or associations of the past.
What was your thinking behind the rebranding solution?
- Nick Ford-Young, Co-CEO at Boldspace
We reinforced TGI Fridays as a space where everyone can feel their true selves. We helped the brand rekindle the feeling of being a champion of true individuality, a place to let go, where - whoever you are, whatever you need a release from, wherever you’re coming from or going to - you’re always welcome at TGI Fridays.
With this, a first crucial decision was made to give the famous stripes some freedom and fluidity, this was an evolvement of the rigid format of the past.
And a second crucial decision was made to bring back ‘TGI’. Whilst this had been removed a few years prior, it seemed an element of brand equity that’s impossible to designate to the history books. The world knew/knows ‘TGIs’ – it was the associations with it we had to renew.
Did you learn anything new during the project?
- Nick Ford-Young, Co-CEO at Boldspace
This was a real exercise in reaching back into the past and evolving a brand respectfully and carefully rather than dramatically. The learnings when working with a brand of this magnitude are always that subtlety is more powerful than revolution.
What was the biggest challenge? How did you overcome it?
- Nick Ford-Young, Co-CEO at Boldspace
The biggest challenge was/is around making sure we build a brand vision, aesthetic and promise that matches the experience, whilst growing into the ambitious plans for the future vision. Rhiannon Scarlett (CMO) and Julie McEwan (CEO) are doing an incredible job with this, and we took on this challenge together, working closely.
What kit/tools/software were used to create it?
- Yuko Kondo, Art Director at Boldspace
Adobe illustrator and Photoshop.
What visual influences fuelled your solution?
- Yuko Kondo, Art Director at Boldspace
We wanted to express TGI Fridays’ brand manifesto “Where there’s freedom to be yourself, to let go and celebrate life.”
What emerged was the idea of freedom of stripes. You can now Show your Stripe’s at TGI Fridays.
What do you hope it achieves for the brand?
- Nick Ford-Young, Co-CEO at Boldspace
These are tough economic times for the nation and brands like TGI Fridays. I hope this work provides the bedrock of a steady and exponential rise that enables it to hold a meaningful place in millions of people’s lives.
What would you do differently if you could do it over again?
- Nick Ford-Young, Co-CEO at Boldspace
Discover the TGI Fridays Sesame Chicken Strips in Legendary Glaze sooner.
