To localise a new food and a new brand to Singapore – Nuodle
Niu Yi Zui is a famous Beef La Mian Brand in China, it has over 50 stores in the countrywide. In 2016, they started to proceed overseas expansion, the first stop is the center of the south of Aisa – Singapore. The challenge we faced is rarely local people know about La Mian and the brand.
Design Thinking : Ramen or La Mian ?
It is a challenge to introduce a new food – La Mian to local people and convince them to try, but it will be easier to explain to them with another name – Ramen.
Yes, Japanese ramen has been so well known worldwide. La Mian and Ramen are actually brothers. During the Meiji era, some Chinese bring La Mian to Japan and started to sell at the Chinatown, that was where Ramen started. This research result gave us a good idea to introduce La Mian to locals.
We convinced the client’s marketing team to use ” Beef Ramen ” instead of ” Beef La Mian ” at the first two seasons marketing promotion, to let people come in to have a taste of the food, then introduce to them more about this after that.
Brand Direction : A Halal ramen fast food restaurant .
La Mian is a street fast food in China, just like Ramen. So we redesigned all food photos, menus, and other graphic visual identities to ensure the fast-food style. Even for the shop interior style, we designed the seating style as a typical ramen store has to ensure the ramen lovers will feel comfortable, familiar with environment and concentrate on the food itself.
Niu Yi Zui, the original name is a hard for non-Chinese speaking people to pronounce and remember, so we design a new name ” Nuodle”, it is a euphony of Chinese words”Niu De” which means “extremely good”. It helps local people can read out and easier for them to memorize.
And Beef La Mian is also an Halal noodle in China, so we convinced client to apply Halal certificate at the first day .
