No sign? No problem for pubs, eateries that like the pull of 'mystique' marketing on customers

Megan O’Connell never noticed that the sign outside Moonshine advertises a business machine company.

She was just driving past the Northwest Portland pub on Northwest 17th Avenue, noticed the light on inside and what looked like an interesting group of patrons outside.

Now a regular at Moonshine, O’Connell likes the misleading sign.

“It feels elite,” she says.

Rebecca Fontaine, enjoying a plate of fries with O’Connell on this Wednesday evening, learned about Moonshine from friends and now she’s a two or three times a week customer.

“I think it’s quirky,” Fontaine says of the sign. “It adds to the charm of the place.”

Moonshine — full name Balls the Cat’s Moonshine Kitchen & Lounge — is among a growing number of Portland establishments run by people who seemingly never took Marketing 101 in college. Or so it would appear, since the dozen or so bars and restaurants either don’t have applicable signs outside or have put up barely noticeable emblems.

Marketing experts say that retail shops need to get the word out, especially to passersby on the street. They say you want people to come, you have to give them a reason.

That’s apparently not the case in Portland, when you’re dealing with a crowd that likes to be in the know.

There’s marketability in mystery, too.

Gil’s Speakeasy on Southeast Taylor Street was the first in town to go the no-sign route, according to owner Brett Gilhuly. The Speakeasy opened in Prohibition-era 1939, when all the places that served alcohol had to stay hidden.

“If you could find it you were more than welcome to come in, and if you couldn’t, find something else,” Gilhuly says of the attitude back in the days when serving alcohol was illegal.

Gilhuly has owned Speakeasy for only eight years and says when he took over the bar he never gave a thought to the lack of a sign. Nowadays, he sees people walk by and get curious about what’s inside, which he figures is a plus.

As for the trend, Gilhuly says he’s noticed it too, with Whiskey Room, Dig a Pony, Sauvage and longtime dessert haven Rimsky-Korsakoffee among the no-sign establishments. The distant past has, apparently, assumed a renewed cachet.

“There seems to be a push for that pre-prohibition cocktail,” Gilhuly says. “People are kind of embracing that underground type of mentality, I guess.”

The mystique beer

With high-priced marketing consultants doing everything they can to gain an edge in this media-saturated era, the no-sign approach taps into a number of valued marketing ideas, says Debra Stephens, University of Portland marketing professor.

“Exclusivity. If you know about it then you’re in the know. You’re cool or whatever the operative word is,” Stephens says. “It would also give people a sense of being special because they know something and they can bring their friends to it and also it reminds them of Prohibition. It gives a sense of forbiddenness, secrets. That appeals to people, too.”

The current marketing trend, Stephens says, is away from broad-based appeals and toward what she calls market segmentation — appealing to a specific group of consumers.

Of course, an establishment based on attracting only those who are in the know by extension might leave out groups of people who aren’t in the know. But Stephens says the no-sign approach is pretty much doing what everybody else does when they try to target a narrow demographic, just more overtly.

“This is what market segmentation is and does,” Stephens says. “You have to decide who you’re going to target.”

“It makes all kind of sense,” says Dan Dickinson, director of advertising management at Portland State University, about the no-sign approach.

Dickinson says companies are always trying to develop mystique around their products, often unsuccessfully.

For years, he says, Coors beer managed it in a big way by not making its suds available in most states, including Oregon. Dickinson remembers driving to California to a little store just across the state border in the 1970s to load up on Coors. In fact, he says that cross-border store virtually lived off its sales of Coors to Oregon customers.

“It was definitely the mystique beer,” Dickinson says. “It was a reason for a party, (bringing) a case of Coors back to Oregon.”

No sign, Dickinson surmises, can play into that same irrational attraction. “If you’re trying to create some kind of mystery, (no sign) is a good way to do it,” he says.

Tucked away

Lauren Beitelspacher, Portland State University marketing professor, says there could be a danger in creating an air of exclusivity.

“Think about those people who stop listening to a band once the band becomes popular,” Beitelspacher says. “Listeners feel like the band sold out and they don’t want to listen to them anymore.”

Beitelspacher sees the same phenomenon occurring regularly with new restaurants. Customers, she says, like a restaurant they feel they discovered.

Social media in many ways substitutes for the disappearing signs, according to Beitelspacher, as a way to get the word out about an establishment. But that might only work for a while, she adds.

“Eventually, these customers will lose interest, and for the restaurants to stay available, they will have to advertise,” she predicts. “Trends are trends because they don’t last forever.”

But for now, says Sepal Meacham, co-owner of Moonshine, the no-sign strategy seems to be working just fine. Moonshine opened a little more than a year ago, and the decision was made to keep the old sign “because it’s super cool and it looks good.”

Business has grown so fast in the past year that adding a sign hasn’t seemed necessary.

Maybe, Meacham says, advertising to a larger audience would take away one of Moonshine’s appeals.

“I like to be tucked away in my little neighborhood bar, and that’s what we are trying to represent here,” she says.