Archives for Branding

Five Rules of US Consumer Engagement for Imported Foods

Imported brands have challenges that ‘native’ American brands can’t imagine. To begin with, your branding is likely to be dictated by a global home office with little insight into the American market. And for many brands, although the U.S. looks like an enormous pot of opportunity, with, at last count, 682 different grocery chains, the splintered distribution system is simply
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Making Friends Across the Aisle in specialty food marketing

It may not make you popular if you’re a congressperson, but if you’re in specialty food marketing,  take a tip from Nielsen’s report on snacking: crossing the aisle to create promotions across the store is the path to success.  They measure and rate correlations on ‘high connectivity” purchases: for example, fresh chicken breasts, which have strong positive correlation with 133 other
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Budgeting for Small Brand Marketers needs Marketing Effectiveness

2015 is coming.  Time for ambitious brands with limited budgets to make really tough choices.  We’ve just won our second award for Marketing Effectiveness, for a project that came in under $350,000.  So we hope you’ll find this helpful: Two things to know about changes in Social Media Be aware that an algorithmic change will drastically reduce your Facebook exposure:  Facebook
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Specialty Food Brands – David versus Goliath battles

  We worked with Rena through the creative food company she founded in 2000 with Tom Eckerle, Soup to Nuts.  Together they created and photographed over 200 recipes for our agency client, Arla Foods. Rena’s expertise in every aspect of food, from recipe creation for the home cook to food service design to the taste preferences of individual markets, was
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Self Storage Marketing | How to start thinking, and acting like a brand.

It was a great ride while it lasted. In the early days of self-storage, you could pick up commercial property, convert it with cheap facilities and rent away. Competition was there, but there were still lots of opportunities to make money – renting a box full of air. Business was good. Self Storage as an industry has matured dramatically in
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The Fifth “P”: Selling in the Era of the Maximizing Mindset

You built your brand on the four P’s – product, place, price, and promotion.  Now you need to think about how your company approaches the fifth ‘P’ – Personhood. Anyone who’s read Groundswell, the seminal text on how social media changed business forever, is familiar with the new reality – that the ‘fourth wall’ has come down.  Corporations used to
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When Social Media Means Having to Say You’re Sorry

Social media campaigns occasionally achieve greatness.  We’re fond of the Breaking Bad app that lets you imitate the credits with your user name) http://www.avclub.com/articles/breaking-badify-your-name-with-this-app,99373/ But what should a company do when things go wrong? Take Citibank as an example.  Occupy Wall St protestors found out that Citi staffers had dialed 911 and sent out the word across social media about
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Top Planning Tools for 2014

Is it August already?  For the kids it’s back to school, for the rest of us, it’s time to lock and load on our marketing plans for 2014.  If your frontal lobe is a bit rusty, these will help: some of our favorite planning tools and overviews. The Things to Come This will get you started with a 30,000-foot perspective. 
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Corporate Social Responsibility as a New Way of Marketing

A few blogs ago, we mentioned the HBR study that showed that consumers align with brands that share their values.  Does that translate to revenue?  It’s starting to. A March 2012 Nielson study determined that “46 percent of global consumers are willing to pay extra for products and services from companies that have implemented programs to give back to society.”
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