This week we had two dinners with the introduction of a new venue, Lima Floral to our TableCrowd restaurants. Here’s a quick rundown on what went on:

Dinner for HealthTech startups & NHS professionals
Taking place at one of our favourite haunts, The Green in Clerkenwell, our HealthTech dinner was co-hosted by Outcomes Based Healthcare. Nasrin Hafezparast, OBH’s Tech Lead led the dinner co-ordinating the usual introductions. The food was delicious with plates of succulent lamb being shared around the tables, not to mention the sublime chocolate brownie that is The Green’s signature dessert! The conversation flowed throughout the room, with laughter and some serious medical chat taking place.

Dine with Moo’s brand manager, Cat Totty
Our intimate dinner on branding and the importance of creative in small businesses had the pleasure of being the first dinner hosted at Lima Floral in Covent Garden. Absolutely everyone that joined the dinner loved the new venue, with particular compliments for the food! Cat was a lovely, friendly speaker who brought a great energy to the dinner. There was a great atmosphere around the table and the conversation flowed naturally.

Her talk included discussions about the highs and lows of her career and her experience at Moo. Although Cat recently left Moo, she spent two years as their Brand Manager, taking the first year to enact the re-brand.

‘Disaster re-brand’ is easy to do as everyone is motivated for change, however for Moo, nothing was broken but everything was happening in an unstructured way. Their goals were to move away from print and head towards a more ‘tech’ direction and identity.

You can’t learn branding in a book

Branding is a personal experience; only time, and trial and error, build brand knowledge. It’s important to acknowledge that Big brand branding is totally different and irrelevant to small brand branding. Beware of being too detailed or granular – sometimes it’s simpler than you think.

Branding really needs a re-brand!

People think branding is all about logos, but what they don’t realise is that it’s also about the process of branding. Cat actively tries to avoid the ‘b’ word for exactly this reason!

Remember, without vision, passion and innate understanding, the brand doesn’t succeed. Apple without Jobs, Laura Ashley without Laura; how can brand managers ever compete with entrepreneurs?

Big thanks go to Cat Totty for speaking at our branding dinner, and our partners Outcomes Based Healthcare and Alma CG.

Take a look at what other dinners we have coming soon at TableCrowd.