Case study: Cancer as a brand concept
Mars is in cancer and since I’ve been talking a lot about business birth charts lately I’ve decided to share a project I worked on for my case study when I was in school at Portland School of Astrology. I have a background in design and branding so one of my passions is to use the archetypal language of astrology to breathe life into businesses in a way that people can perceive through their five senses.
This is an example of how you can use an archetype to create a concept for a business this one being a Sicilian family-owned restaurant called Da’Nonnas.
This is a Cancer business. I didn’t use a full birth chart—this is simply a manifestation of one archetypal idea, but my hope is that this helps illustrate the energy of Cancer and how it can show up in a brand or business.
Below is the full creative brief, written as if the Cancerian owner of this Cancerian brand were answering questions about their business.
Company name:
Da Nonna’s
About your company:
Da Nonna’s has operated as a family-owned Italian restaurant located in the Upper West Side of Manhattan New York since 1892. Rosa “Nonna” Sabino is the namesake behind the restaurant, original co-owner along with her husband Arturo, and the woman behind the recipes still used in the house today. Nonna’s homemade ricotta is at the root of all our recipes, only 4 living people have access to the recipe, and it’s so delicious, it’s kept Da Nonna’s in business all this time.
We have lots of regulars at Da Nonna’s that come by at least once a week with their families. Some have been coming in since they were kids and their grandparents came here when they were kids.
This is a place of beginnings and endings for our community. Families begin here with first dates and engagements. We host wedding receptions and parties for all occasions. This is a place where people are comfortable coming with their families after hard times, funerals, filled with grief. It’s a place of comfortable familiarity. No surprises. Our recipes are the same as they were 100 years ago.
Products/services you provide:
Good familiar food that feeds the soul
Business mission/goal:
To nourish people and to keep them coming back with their families. We want this to be a place where people feel like family, feel taken care of, and love the food.
Ideal customer/client: (i.e. age, income, gender, marital status, industry, values, beliefs, lifestyle, hobbies, interests, etc.)
Mothers in their 40s with families, married to protective provider type, stay at home or caretaking jobs, interested in home cooking, scrapbooking, crying at Titanic for the 26th time, talking about her feelings with her few good friends on the porch with a glass of chardonnay.
Brief summary of the project:
Da Nonna’s wants a rebrand. Change is really hard for us, but hopefully, we can keep the same feeling with a new look. We don’t want any of the brand material to be cold or sterile. Must be warm and cozy. Clean but soft enough for kids to run off their full bellies. Hopefully giving a nod to our homeland and ancestors in Sicily.
What emotions do you want your brand to exude: (ex. joyful, expensive, calm, loud etc.)
Nostalgia, tradition, sentimentality, comfortable
Overall brand look + feel: ( what overall style are you envisioning?)
Rustic and cozy. Not too clean that children can’t be there. Like a cozy living room in a well-kept upper middle-class home.
A little dark and moody, beautiful, but filled with historical photos and candles. Lots of natural light. Like a grey day by the ocean, sitting in a cottage.
Color story: (what colors are you drawn to? or not drawn to?) We love white, cream, grey, peach, seafoam, and black.
If this inspires you and you’d like to explore how you can use your birth chart and your business’s birth chart to create a beautiful brand that speaks for itself, send me a message below!
