we work best when
we work together
and drink coffee.
we are cafe.
An independent agency co-operative. A community of thinkers, creatives, designers and client partners. That’s right, for us our clients are a part of our team.
After years of working within big agency networks, we decided to bring our experience and enthusiasm (we love what we do) to work with ambitious and entrepreneurial businesses and brands helping them to grow and thrive. Working collaboratively, around the table, both physically and virtually. Without egos. Without bureaucracy. Without bullshit.
We create bespoke teams for each brief, ensuring we have the right people, working in the right way, for the right results. We dig deep revealing insights and distinctive ways to unlock a business’s potential.
We design bold and beautiful. And we create big juicy creative ideas that bring brands to life.
cafe is a simple idea.
We think. We create. We design. Together.
our work.
If you’re not evolving, you’re standing still. That’s the insight we developed with Evolus, as we invited their customers to ‘Evolve with us’. A call to be a part of something new in a market, where there had been little innovation for over a decade.
In the highly regulated medical aesthetic sector, we took a challenger brand approach vowing to look, sound and behave differently.
Together we’ve defined the brand. Created a new identity. Developed a company culture book. Built brand activations and taken the brand to multiple international congresses.
Evolus are now recognised as market game-changers in the US, UK, Italy and Germany with more launches planned in 2024.
The advent of cheaper and widely accessible technology has made the corporate video market increasingly competitive.
We worked with VIEW to identify their space in the market – building on their experience of working for tech brands to tell complex technical stories, simply, compellingly and beautifully.
We developed a new name, VIEW (from Video2Web), a new positioning and endline ‘Complex stories, made simple’, a new brand identity and a new website. The new brand is resonating internally and externally, resulting in new opportunities across both existing clients and new.
Milk from the back of the fridge? Big potatoes for chips?
We helped buymie, Ireland’s leading grocery delivery business bring their outstanding customer service to life. How? By promising that their Personal Shoppers will shop with all the same care and attention as their customers do. The brand idea and endline ‘We shop like you do’ positioned buymie above more generic delivery services. We brought it to life in social, TV and radio.
We also, worked with buymie to help launch their partnership with ASDA in the UK. And since their acquisition by Dunnes Stores, we’re helping them to define their role as Dunnes’ ‘same day’ delivery service.
Buying home insurance is a nightmare, so. Hoot had a simple, but brilliant idea. Instead of inputting your entire life story, you can enter your postcode and receive a quote in seconds.
With a little insight work, a creative leap and not one but two Alexander Armstrongs (the posh chappie off Pointless), we developed the idea ‘Don’t torture yourself with home insurance’ and created a memorable multi-channel campaign that set this challenger brand free.
Who said home insurance is dull?
No company can afford for its building tech to stifle its potential. It can affect efficiency, profitability and demotivate employees.
WiredScore assess and certify digital connectivity and smart technology in buildings around the world. We worked with them to turn their one-product business into a multi-product brand, developing a brand positioning, architecture, endline and brand idea to aid their global rollout.
Our idea ‘Building Potential’ sums up their offer in two simple words, and our bold visual approach ensures WiredScore stands out in a world of generic certification companies.
CarCloud is literally ‘Your car on your phone’. It’s a free app that uses vehicle-to-cloud document storage for all your insurance, tax and legal docs along with timely policy reminders.
Our on-going relationship design challenge was to create a platform and brand landscape that stood out from the competition, was user friendly and worked across all devices. We developed a brand identity using a neumorphic design – soft pastel blues and greys with highlights and shadows to create a simple fluid experience for users.
We’ve since worked together on several other projects from new account registrations to online reporting and infographics for their investors.
We teamed up with the incredible people at Concern Worldwide through a series of strategy and planning workshops to help them solve a problem.
Everyone within the organisation agreed with the brand’s strapline ‘Ending extreme poverty whatever it takes’. But there was little consensus how it should translate to communications.
Different teams had different ideas, which meant the brand was being pulled in multiple directions.
We worked together to explain their purpose and help define their story. We created a new narrative, manifesto film and developed guidelines to drive new levels of consistency across all of their communications and fundraising activities.
You go to the dentist to get a crown or a bridge, but where do dentists go?
Until 2020 they were mostly going to small family-run, specialist, independent orthodontist dental laboratories. That was when our client, Ansor, a private equity firm started buying these businesses to form ALS, the category’s first multi-lab company.
We worked with them and multiple laboratory stakeholders to create a positioning and master brand identity for their business, pulling together multiple subsidiaries under one brand.
We created a bold new look and colour palette that stands out in the sector’s sea of sameness. The resulting brand is revolutionising the dental lab business and to date more than 20 labs have joined the ALS family with more planned for 2024.
Did you know sleep deprivation is a serious problem affecting 1 in 3 adults worldwide?
New start-up Vocā was born from a desire to encourage people to reappraise their relationship with sleep. And through better evening rituals and the aromacological power of scent, help everyone to improve their health and wellbeing.
We worked closely with Vocā from conceptual idea, name and logo research through to product packaging. Our design work and typography is luxurious and sensorial – we wanted it to feel fresh, premium and timeless and reflect the range of scents like Mediterranean Moon and Oriental Lullaby.
Since its successful launch, we’ve continued to work together to create social content and events. We’ve also been able to sleep a lot better.
Evelyn Partners are the oldest start-up in town.
Formed from the merger of two city institutions, Evelyn Partners are the fresh face of finance, building a brand not on typical corporate values but on ‘good advice’.
They asked us to bring a human face to their business exit services, so we asked ourselves, how can we make this B2B campaign feel less like, well a B2B campaign?
The answer was a clear, simple idea, 360° advice. We let the Evelyn Partners team tell their stories in a relaxed natural environment, far removed from the financial world, and all created with outstanding production values.
we help start up and
scale up brands to find
their voice and identity.
who we work with.
who we are.
Bob
Business Partner. Playful. Chelsea fan. Still gigging.
Bob has worked with some of the world’s most iconic brands and companies, including HSBC, Duracell, BBC, Bayer, P&G and Unilever. But it is establishing cafe that has been his proudest career achievement to date.
Nat
Delivery Partner. Plate spinner. Ridiculously organised. Dance lover. Fabulous shoes.
Nat quite simply makes things happen. Across all aspects of integrated comms, Nat consistently delivers on time and on budget and always with a smile on her (and everyone else’s) face.
Nick
Design Partner. Greek. Musical. Captain of his ship. Talks a lot.
Nick has over three decades’ agency experience. Managing design and production teams for multiple clients in multiple disciplines, ensuring the work is always world class. His team have always been like family to him.
Alison
Strategic Partner. Professionally nosey. Saving for a pony.
Alison’s strategic experience covers client side, comms and media agencies. And if that wasn’t enough, in 2019 she launched her own research agency ‘Truth Doctors’ combining both human and bot-based research techniques.
Paul
Creative Partner. Bearded. Mad about dogs. Sometimes a bit scruffy.
Paul has been a creative director both agency and client side for over 20 years. Working with the likes of British Airways, Bayer, Johnson & Johnson, Vodafone and Nokia, he has created award-winning work for both creativity and effectiveness.