Client: Noble's Restaurants
Project: Noble's Crush Festival

Company Overview:
Noble's is the number one fine dining restaurant chain in North Carolina. In business since the 1983, it is famous for it's Mediterranean, Italian and French Cuisine. During the flagging economy of 2001-2003, Noble's needed a way to boost sagging sales and to promote positive public relations for the chain. We developed a plan to bring more people into the restaurants, get more press coverage and help a local, developing industry.

Problems
• Declining sales and patronage
• Greater competition from casual dining restaurants
• A growing irrelevancy in the local and regional press

Implications
• Negative perception in the marketplace
• A shift in dining patterns towards casual dining
• Prevention of opening new restaurants

Solutions
The Noble's Crush Festival Campaign
I directed the Noble's Crush Festival Campaign - a full service ad campaign that highlighted wine and wineries from the burgeoning North Carolina wine industry in a fine dining environment.

The first step was to pitch the idea of the Crush Festival to all North Carolina wineries and garner their participation. The Festival began in June and went through the end of the grape crush at the end of September.

The second step involved having all the wineries submit their wines for judging and inclusion into the Festival.

The third step was to design a series of events to attract a new crowd to Noble's, get them in the habit of coming into one of the restaurants and give the local and regional press a reason to write about Noble's in a positive light.

• Wednesday's Night Wine Social - Every Wednesday night, at every Noble's restaurant - the bar highlighted a different flight of wines every week along with free hors d'oeuvres. Wednesday being the chain's slowest night of the week, it offered the best opportunity to gain mid-week patrons and have them make plans to become weekend diners. Coordinating with the wineries, the Socials would frequently have a winemaker at the restaurant for the patrons to chat with as they sampled the wines.

• Wine Tastings - Once a month for the duration of the Festival, each restaurant hosted a wine tasting on a Saturday afternoon. Featuring three wineries and free hors d'oeuvres, guests were invited to sample the work of the wineries with hors d'oeuvres specially paired with the wines being served. Weather permitting, these events were hosted on the restaurant's terraces with a four string jazz band.

• Winery Tours - Once a month, the chain would offer a special winery tour to the Yadkin Valley; the East Coast's fastest growing winery region. The tour consisted of visits to three wineries, at the final winery on the tour, Noble's Catering provided dinner in the vineyard, specially paired with the wineries offerings.

• Wine Pairings - Once a week, each restaurant included a special wine pairing menu item featuring the same flight of wines from the Wednesday Night Wine Social paired with a three course meal.

The fourth step was to implement the advertising and pr campaigns. A kick-off dinner was held at the beginning of the Festival for the press and the wineries. The campaigns included keeping the press appraised of the Festival events and the deployment of a broad-based advertising campaign including pr, broadcast, print, and interactive elements.