The arts district of Charlotte has a distinct character. Orange Olive Hair Gallery fit right in with the aesthetic and the culture.

Brand management for a salon in the heart of the Arts district of Charlotte

Orange Olive Hair Gallery was a salon located in the NoDa area of Charlotte, which is the unofficial arts district of the city. As a musician, I spent a lot of time in NoDa, either to perform or to listen to other independent artists who played one of several listening rooms in the area. One of my more eclectic gigs took place at a hair salon during a monthly Gallery Crawl night, and it led to a long-lasting brnd management relationship with the salon's leadership.

The logo for Orange Olive Hair Gallery was created before I came on board. It was my job to honor the established brand aesthetic with new promotional artifacts.

When I first met with Melissa, the owner of Orange Olive Hair Gallery, she already had a logo and website in place, with established brand colors and typefaces. The website was on trend when it was designed, but some changes to web standards were on the horizon, and they would require a brand new website to stay current.

The brand had a commanding tagline: Where classic and creative collide.

The physical location was a renovated craftsman-style house in the NoDa distrcit of Charlotte, which is known for it's bohemian style, rich music scene, and strong support of the arts.

The Gallery: When in Noda…

Twice a month, the NoDa community coordinated gallery crawls. Orange Olive transformed from salon to art gallery by hosting an open house during the gallery crawl to promote the work of a local artist. Wine, food, and live music were also key features of each open house.

The salon displayed the work of the artist on the walls of the salon to support the arts while keeping the interior of the space fresh, with new artwork for clientele to enjoy with each visit to the salon. On Gallery Crawl nights, an open house was held to celebrate the work of the featured artist and showcase the talents a local musician.

The salon needed promotional items that showed off the creativity of the business

I worked with Orange Olive for many years to help create promotional items and identity pieces that captured the same classic and creative vibe that the salon and the stylists brought to work every day.

Next came postcards that could be mailed out periodically to regain the attention of clients.
To promote each open house, handbills with all the details were created to be handed out at the salon and sent out in the mail as postcards.
One of the most effective pieces was a matchbook style set of referral cards that clients could give to friends and family to earn a monetary reward for both the referrer and the referee. This concept won awards Graphic Design USA and the Hermes Awards for packaging design.
The original website was a slick Flash animation, and while it was trendy and sleek, Flash was set to be deprecated on mobile devices, which opened the door for a mobile first, responsive website, that would be easier to update and maintain. I became the webmaster for the site through several iterations, including an upfit from static HTML and CSS to a PHP/MySQL content management system called Perch. Adding analytics to the site helped to identify user flows and needs, which led to an increased use of the site and online bookings, as well.

The brand direction was set, and the concept encouraged unique solutions.

I had the pleasure of working with Jimmy to create a complete brand experience and strategy for The Rusty Onion that centered around the theme of being anything but typical.

Project Elements

Do you need a designer who can help you manage your brand on a tight budget?

I'd love to chat about your project needs. Want to see more work like this? Let me tell you about the work I did to brand The Rusty Onion, a restaurant with a name so unique that it screamed for a concept as original as the name was bold.

Process plays an important role in human behavior. It can motivate us in ways we may not perceive.

When Melissa came to me with the idea of referral cards, I thought about all the rewards programs I'd used in the past. Endless punch cards, with very little incentive to keep up with them or spread the word among my friends and family. But she wanted to offer a significant incentive by giving referral cards to existing clients to hand out to their friends when they inevitably complement their hair. Each person would earn a $10 credit when the referral card was used at the salon. For the client giving the referrals, the rewards would stack.

These matchbook style referral card booklets won an award in the sales promotion category from GD USA.

The process of presenting a card to someone became the primary consideration:

What would make the person giving the referral feel special?
How could the process of handing out a referral card turn heads at a gathering of women?
What would make receiving a referral card instill a sense that it was valuable, like being given real money?
How can we incentivize the stylists to hand out the referral cards to clientele?

The result was a custom solution: A matchbook-style booklet of ten referral cards that Orange Olive clientele can give to friends to receive salon credit for both parties.

The process becomes a ritual

Each stylist has a "secret" stash of booklets where they've written their name on each card. They ask their client, "If I gave you $100 to tell people about me and the salon, would you do it?" This promotes referrals for each specific stylist.
The process of getting the bright orange booklet out of a pocket or a purse gets attention because it is unique. The client writing their name on the card and addressing it to their friend, then tearing along the perforations to remove it feels like writing a check.
For the recipient, they've been handed a thick piece of high end paper, printed in green ink. It looks and feels like money.
The referral brings the card to the salon, already knowing the name of the stylist and having a friend in common. This fosters an immediate sense of connection and belonging.

These cards are designed to look and feel like currency. They lean into the green of the brand, and the process involves writing and tearing along a perforation, like when writing a check.

The results: It was a huge success

The process of taking this matchbook-style booklet out of a pocket or purse and filling it out to award to a friend led to a highly successful referral program.

Melissa noticed that when women came to the salon and presented their referral card, they presented it like a gift card, or cash. They treated it as valuable &emdash; and it was. Also, the stylists reported that their clients were proud to be given the booklets; they felt like they were being given an insider benefit &emdash; and they were. Pulling the booklet out at lunch to give a card to a friend who had complemented their hair was an elite experience, and they had the inside track to a great salon and stylist.