Martin Auer & moodley brand identity

Kreativwirtschaft Austria collects successful and vivid examples that show how creative professionals create added value and turnover together with their customers from the business world – even under tough competitive conditions, as the example of a bakery in Graz proves. The combination of craftsmanship and design has an appetizing effect and has doubled turnover.

With body and soul

What does bread taste like when you breathe a soul into it? The Graz-based entrepreneur Martin Auer set out in search of real taste and found his recipe for success by working with the moodley design agency. With a new range and fresh ideas, the company has gained new customers, a new team spirit and higher sales.

Demand for excellence and aesthetics

Selling bread in saturated markets poses major challenges for bakeries today: Industrially manufactured products are selling like hot cakes and discount stores and petrol station stores are stepping up competition with bakery boxes. Against this backdrop, Martin Auer took over his family’s bakery business in 2011, where bread has been baked for 650 years.

The baker wanted to go its own way and was looking for external creative partners to implement and communicate the new vision. Martin Auer wanted professionals with the same standards of excellence and aesthetics to discuss the really relevant questions, make relevant answers visible and make the spirit of the company tangible. He found them in the Graz-based design agency moodley brand identity.

Path to a new identity

The collaboration began in summer 2012 with the repositioning of the brand and the further development of the business model. “In the initial phase, the benefit was to have someone who understood the company,” says Auer, describing a significant added value of the collaboration that he does not take for granted. Mike Fuisz, designer and founder of moodley brand identity, concedes his client’s qualities as a customer in return. The chemistry was visibly right from the start. Initially, the two and their teams dedicated themselves to the core of the new brand and really questioned everything. A year later, everyone involved agreed that people were longing for something that had been lost through industrial bread production, and this is exactly what the traditional bakery’s new claim promised: “Give bread back its soul!”

“Let’s roggen!”

Since then, the Auer bakery has exclusively produced vegan, lactose-free and egg-free organic bread based on handmade natural sourdough, in addition to high-quality small baked goods and pastries. However, qualitative growth also requires more resources for the employees so that the spirit is shared by everyone and passed on to the customers – a process that is at least as time-consuming as the meticulously thought-out and implemented design of web and print products, stores and cafés.

Today, the added value of the repositioning, which was awarded the prestigious Marktkieker 2016 innovation prize, can be seen and felt everywhere: in the design of the bread kitchen, where bread and street food are available at the centrally located Jakominiplatz. In the mix of chalk board and environmentally friendly packaging, sympathy and closeness, plain language and the desire to play with language. “Let’s roggen!” invites you to enjoy the new attitude to life. “Wir brezeln uns auf!” is the slogan on the building lattice when a new store is being built, and the colorful little cars are driving through the city with the message “Make bread not war!”. Even the tiniest details reveal the signature that Mike Fuisz and his team have left their mark on. moodley has taken ideas, developed them consistently and poured them into a design concept. As a result, the aestheticization of the new brand is in line with the company’s vision. “Whether it’s the layout of a magazine or the design of packaging, the tone is right,” says the creative entrepreneur, describing a key benefit of the collaboration.

Magnetism of the brand

“Give bread back its soul.” The slogan, which is sympathetically varied on smaller and larger screens, on packaging, boards and in the in-house magazine, can be understood as a passionate plea for the value of a staple food, as a playful invitation to enjoy life. Customers have obviously understood the phrase well, as the figures show. Between 2011 and 2018, sales increased by more than 90%. The creative energy of the cooperation has a lasting effect: the design of the next store is being worked on with heart and soul. On land for the first time.

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