Jeff Ruby: A one-man brand

Every Jeff Ruby restaurant starts with a detailed story, created by Ruby himself. Twenty-seven years after he opened the Precinct, his first Cincinnati restaurant, Ruby is embarking on a first-ever companywide branding effort to ensure all of his restaurants are on the same page and conveying an image of “high-energy, upscale dining,” he says.

Jeff Ruby Culinary Entertainment hired downtown-based Holland Advertising to streamline the branding and advertising for his seven current and any future restaurants.

The restaurants will bear Ruby’s signature and the name of the restaurant inside a gold-on-black logo. The South Beach Grill at the Waterfront in Covington, for example, will be known as “Jeff Ruby’s Waterfront.”

In addition to South Beach, Ruby owns Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouses downtown, at the Belterra casino and in Louisville; the Precinct in Columbia Tusculum; Tropicana in Newport, and Carlo & Johnny in Montgomery.

Before the change, Ruby and a graphic designer had created separate logos to suit the theme of each restaurant.
But as he expands his brand outside the city, his management team convinced him it was important to have a unified theme.
“It was difficult for me because those logos were dear to me,” said Ruby.

Ruby’s executive and personal assistant for the last 8 1/2 years, Amy Lewis, said delegating responsibility after so many years of doing everything himself was a big transition for Ruby.
“This is all very new to Jeff. For years, he has been the CEO, the CFO, the COO, the chief marketing officer and the VP of operations.”
Last March, Ruby moved his corporate offices from the Precinct to a suite above his steakhouse at Seventh and Walnut streets downtown. He hired Kevin Maguire as his first-ever vice president of operations last fall.

“Getting our house in order” was among the first projects Lewis and Maguire tackled, she said. Ruby’s an idea guy, said Lewis, and letting someone else take over advertising allows him more time to focus on expansion.

For Holland Advertising - whose offices are above Ruby’s - the project was about organization, not creation, of a brand. “Anyone who’s been to his restaurants knows what the Ruby brand is,” said Ben Stallard, Holland’s vice president of strategic development. “You know about the excellence, the service, the attention to detail. All these things come screaming through, and it’s very impressive.” But not everything Ruby is associated with is necessarily right for an ad. As a result, a couple of ads proposed for his new campaign were rejected. “We don’t serve the Juice,” referring to Ruby’s refusal to serve O.J. Simpson at his Louisville restaurant last May, was nixed. And, “When in New York, get the chicken” (because Cincinnati has the best steakhouse) didn’t make the cut either.

The restaurants’ new golden oval will be like McDonald’s golden arches: instantly recognizable no matter where it is, said Lewis.
Ruby’s team and Holland also diversified ad spending, which accounts for about 3 percent of total revenue.
Previous advertising focused primarily on quarterly full-page newspaper and magazine ads.

Maguire said they’ll now spend 20 percent of the ad budget on print advertising, but will use smaller ads more often. The remainder will go to agency fees (30 percent); TV/radio, direct mail and billboards (30 percent); a new Web site (15 percent); and targeted e-mails (5 percent). A commercial is in production, and a billboard is in place on Interstate 71. Click here to download pdf article.