If his career to end today, Tre Musco might well be remembered as the man who gave the Colonel an apron. Just the new smile Colonel Sanders brandishes on a test logo took a month to design.
For a 12-person marketing consultancy, Musco’s Tesser has kept busy: The company just finished redesigning the Häagen-Dazs ice cream stores, is in the midst of helping launch a national 24-hour/30-minute fitness chain, and is working with Dairy Queen on redesigning its stores’ familiar look.
With revenues said to be growing at 30% a year, Musco is trying to maintain the mellow culture of his San Francisco-based boutique agency while allowing for a certain amount of growth. For now, growth is winning: The company will soon move into new digs with double the space and add more staffers.
How has Tesser beaten the Goliaths? Usually, says Musco, it’s hard work, attention to detail, having confidence in his work, and focusing more on the “end-customer,” rather than the client.
Musco has outmuscle his much larger rivals in creative “shoot-outs” to win accounts, most notably for his first major success in 1994 when Tesser landed Chevy’s Mexican restaurant chain over three much bigger consultancies. The firm won more than 40 awards after it designed a new store prototype and updated the chain’s identity to emphasize its “Fresh from Scratch” image.
The company redecorated outlets with bright colors, and introduced menus that appeared to be hand-painted to emphasize the food’s freshness. Tesser inserted the term “Fresh Max” into the company’s logo and all of its advertising copy.
Lesson No. 1 – Get to know the product, the client and the customer – not the 19th hole.
“We drove around to 20 restaurants. We went all over, sat there at meals, talked to everyone, the door manager, customers – informally – to try and understand what was so cool about the place and what could be made better,” Musco says.
What did the team learn? That Chevy’s had a great product but did not know how to get its message across to the public.
Tesser went on to update what is now Quiznos Subs, which has grown fourfold from the 1,000 outlets it had in 2000. One of Musco’s ideas was to take the apostrophe off of “Quiznos’” because research showed it confused customers.
“They wondered that if there’s an apostrophe, where is Mr. Quiznos,” he says. “It was just a fun name for a cool restaurant.”
Lesson No. 2 – In selling a concept to a potential client, Musco says companies must push what they believe in rather than pander to what they believe the CMO wants. “When we go into a first meeting with the CMO or CEO, we say our job is to think the end-consumer is our client,” Musco says, adding that marketers often appreciate the refreshing honesty or are happy because they had similar ideas but could not push them due to internal politics.
Last year, Tesser landed the KFC logo redesign, a daunting task since the Colonel was such a recognizable symbol worldwide.
Since KFC was pushing a new line of healthy chicken products, Musco gave Colonel Sanders a fresh look as well with a logo aimed at telling people that “something new is going on at KFC.” But how to make the iconic, but geriatric, icon seem fresh?
Tesser remade Sanders from a “grumpy” old man into “a friendly uncle.” The firm threw an apron over the suit, kept everything else, and then spent a month drawing a new smile. “With one line you can change an entire face,” he notes.
The new logo, which is posted at tesser.com, could be rolled out in a year after more testing, according to Musco, who says it has earned “98% recognition” among consumers who also say the Colonel looks healthier.
Lesson No. 3 – Be bold and original and in executing those concepts keep the end-customer – not the client – in the front of the line. Who would ever try and put an apron on the Colonel?
“Do something other people aren’t offering,” Musco says, adding that smaller firms rarely succeed in trying to keep costs down and underbid its bigger rivals. Firms are not looking for cost-cutters but companies that get it right the first time.
Other Musco tips:
- To get started Musco acknowledges the importance of knowing the right people, but not necessarily at the top. He got his foot in the door with help from middle managers after working for Louis Nelson Associates prior to attending graduate school. He also advises start-ups to think small and do any work they can to build up a portfolio and get someone’s attention.
- Don’t hold anything back when bidding for a project because “you don’t necessarily get a second chance with a big opportunity. You have to rely a little on luck. Don’t worry about the budget. Don’t worry about that golf tee-off time.”
- Smaller firms should have a specialty but not an overly narrow one. Tesser appears to specialize in the food service/restaurant business, but has won clients in a wide range of industries.
What’s Tesser’s focus: “We understand consumers in a retail environment and take that understanding and make the brand and the product better,” Musco says.
As the baseball pitcher Dizzy Dean once famously said, “It ain’t bragging if you can do it.”
