TWG Corporate Executive Chef and National Accounts Manager, Michael O’Donnell, gets much of the credit. We scored big with the salsa bar in California last year. We worked with Michael and the TWG team to refine and improve the concept for this year’s event during the National Restaurant Show. Trinity Lancaster, our account executive for TWG, worked with Josh DeVoti with our exhibit company, Essyx Exhibits & Displays, to build a small, easy to assemble and transport ingredient display that allowed our guests of top foodservice executives to select their own ingredients. Michael’s team then pressed a fresh tortilla and filled it with a slightly spicy pork cooked outdoors with our manufacturing partner, Big Green Egg Chicago.

We also refined our “Walking Table” concept of spicy shooters delivered by a spicy hostess. Our team developed a smaller, more versatile tray insert that can navigate big crowds while still sparking conversation. Whether delivering a delicious sangria or a tasty pork & salsa, TWG’s foodservice sales team was busy striking up conversations about the bold, balanced flavor of Texas Pete®.

We kept hearing from veterans of the restaurant business that they had never built their own personal salsa which was the essence of our brand message that anyone can become a kitchen hero with the flavor of Texas Pete®.

Michael’s vision and everyone’s perspiration serves as a tremendous example of teamwork and attention to detail that delivered a positive positioning for our client that will build this sauce brand and generate new sales.

Nielsen reports that Internet video usage continues to grow (from 56% of users watching online video in 2008 to 75% in 2013). The 20-second pre-roll commercials that appear before online content is also more powerful than regular 30-second broadcast or cable television commercials. Nielsen data shows that on average people streaming video watch ads for 20 seconds with an average completion rate of 87%. Online video ads also have a higher impact than TV ads, especially for a demographic that historically has been the most expensive to reach on broadcast or cable TV (Men 18-34). The data is convincing and the opportunity to deliver your message in 20-second bites is now.

We’re now actively storyboarding our next round of 20′s destined for the Internet. Are you?

The 24-unit regional chain serving Tennessee and Southwest Virginia is best known for its Big Pal hamburger, hot dog and 32-ounce Big Tea. Yet, its popular Toasted Cheese sandwich had never been the focus of an advertising campaign by the 57-year-old restaurant.

“Like everything else, we do things differently when it comes to Toasted Cheese,” says chain president and CEO Thom Crosby. “We take a burger bun and flip it where the top of the bun is on the inside of the sandwich. We toast the bun, add a thick slice of American cheese, tomato, lettuce, mayo and you have an exceptional grilled cheese experience. We’re offering bacon as an option, and nearly 60 percent of our customers can’t resist adding two thick-sliced bacon strips to their Toasted Cheese.”

I knew this campaign would work, based on our planned approach and emerging trends just now impacting major chains. Since 2008, grilled cheese sandwiches have been on a steady track toward more and more restaurant menus. “Any time the economy goes south, consumers head toward comfort foods, and there is nothing more comforting than a great grilled cheese,” Crosby says. “The economy is back, but our Toasted Cheese is front and center with our restaurant and our customers are loving it.”

In the weeks since the launch of an advertising campaign featuring the sandwich, sales across the regional chain are up double digits. Led by a television campaign we developed featuring a beauty shop discussion on the virtues of the Toasted Cheese (http://bit.ly/palstoastedcheese), and combined with radio, outdoor and social media, Pal’s bread supplier recently had to increase production of the chain’s unique burger bun that is used for the Toasted Cheese. Increased chatter among Pal’s 46,000 followers on Facebook and Twitter regarding the Toasted Cheese has spread the news about another new hero to the restaurant’s menu.

It’s a campaign that has everyone talking and cruising to a Pal’s. There’s nothing more old-fashioned than a grilled cheese, or the beauty shop your mom used to take you to for a new hairdo. That association with a fond memory and a memorable sandwich is behind the buzz of this campaign.

- Per dollar investment, e-mail marketing offers the highest return on investment. More than paid search, web banners or social media.

- 75% of customers prefer to be contacted via e-mail than other forms of communications. More than phone calls, direct mail, advertising.

- The average B2B target spends 2.25 hours per day reviewing or responding to e-mails, receiving an average of 105 e-mails per day (that’s low for me).

- 53% of consumers check their e-mails before breakfast.

- 46% of e-mails are ready on a mobile device. That’s up 300% in just two years.

- As expected, the subject line is the most important factor in opening an e-mail. What is second? An engaging visual image.

These facts should provide you with some key learning into today’s e-mail market dynamics. Use them to craft greater ROI for your organization.

From our roots within a strategic resource for the U.S. Navy’s Nuclear Propulsion Program, we’ve created, executed and shared compelling communications that are considered best-in-class within the energy sector.

At the heart of our promise is to mine clear, concise and compelling imagery and copy from complex technologies to public and stakeholder audiences. By transforming the complex or boring into brilliant communications, our clients earn success.

Creative Energy campaigns have helped to beat swords into plowshares and transform Cold War legacies into visionary energy parks of the future. Quite simply – we ignite ideas.

You are invited to explore a few of our most powerful energy ideas now or visit the Energy section of our Work.

Unglamorous as they may be, Free Standing Inserts (FSI) are still the lowest-cost entry into branding for a broad reach. If you don’t know FSIs, they are the four-color inserts in your Sunday newspaper touting everything from canned and frozen foods to dishwashing liquids and offering discount coupons to promote trial. While circulation of newspapers to American readers is now less than 18%, more than 75% of all supermarket coupons that are redeemed comes from FSIs. At less than $4 CPM for a 1/2 page FSI, you can achieve a broad reach to those who know to look each week for discount coupons utilizing this vehicle.

Our client knows that his products must sell in his new “pioneer” markets and sell quickly to maintain his new Wal-Mart distribution in Ohio, Louisiana, Florida and Texas. Our first step was to assess each Wal-Mart DC to determine how many supercenters could be served with the newspaper distribution of our supplier. The initial numbers showed that we would need to purchase more than 32 million insertions to fully support the new distribution. That simply wasn’t possible. Next, we started to pull in the radius of the circles around the most valuable DC markets until we hit the affordable budget number. We arrived at five DCs that we could get the most bang for our buck from at about a 50-mile radius of the DC. That meant that we could reach about seven million consumers. Our supplier explained to me that this is the first time an ad agency has used this methodology to specifically target DCs. Oh well.

We did have the option to tell shoppers to specifically find the products by mentioning Wal-Mart and utilizing the Wal-Mart logo. That would cost extra and our strategy was to not only support Wal-Mart but to entice consumers to go to their favorite supermarket with our 50¢ off coupon to potential spark something we term as forced distribution. It seldom occurs, but we have experienced our clients getting phone calls from retailers who experienced disappointed customers who could not find the clients item in their stores. The upside of the FSI investment could thus spark new distribution – especially in new markets.

It was a smart, cost-effective solution for this client and Wal-Mart should be happy with the support by the manufacturer in pulling the product through initial distribution via the coupon. FSIs are an old-school science that is slowly giving way to other forms of couponing, but in the right situation can be a good option.

Image credit: www.barbarasbeat.blogspot.com

The General Shale app has many features, including an easy and convenient user interface that allows the user to:

Browse the full product line for product colors and sizes
Choose brick size and enter the price per thousand
Calculate total bricks needed, plus bags of mortar, sand and more
Preview product color in landscape mode on the job site
Send the name of your favorite products or final cost calculation via e-mail
Find your closest General Shale retail location, to call for more information and map driving directions

“Contractors and customers utilizing this new app will find it helpful to move their project along easily and quickly,” says Dawn Henning, director of marketing and retail sales. “While there’s no substitution for human interaction with our sales staff, I think making it easy to browse online first helps customers be more educated about our products when they do come into a showroom, thus ensuring they are making the right choice for their project.”

The General Shale smartphone app is available now
on the App Store™.

CnC’s have grown significantly over the past five years. Driven by the last recession, CnC’s, such as Sam’s Club, COSTCO and Restaurant Depot are now players in reaching small businesses. For this assignment, the targets are small restaurants, churches, caterers, and food truck operators who, for a variety of reasons prefer to purchase their food and paper goods from a CnC instead of a regular food distributor.

We’re aligning other brands with one of our clients to execute cross merchandising promotions. This involves identifying non-competitive brands whose products naturally align for a recipe solution. For example, a pizza dough made by one company with a pizza sauce made by another. We can use tear pads showcasing a recipe and a rebate offer that creates pull-through to the sale of both products at the same time at checkout. The consumer sends in a copy of their store receipt and if both items appear on the receipt, each company will mail a rebate to them.

The manufacturers enjoy exposure of their brand in new locations within the store with this kind of cross merchandising. I my example, the pizza sauce company gets some exposure within the freezer case where the pizza dough is shelved. The pizza dough earns some exposure on the dry goods shelf.

Truth is, that there won’t be high coupon redemptions using this model, but it should create sales lift (isn’t that really what you are looking for?). That is because many consumers will see the special offer and purchase the two products. However, they will likely be either too busy or forget to actually make the effort to complete the rebate form, make a copy of their receipt and pay the 46¢ to mail it in.

Brand partnerships are an important way to build awareness and sales while reducing the overall cost of the promotion, since each company will pick up only half of the cost of the effort instead of all of the cost. There are many ways to perform brand partnerships and I’m happy to say that it appears that, again, we will be putting two great brands together to generate sales lift.

We’ve just completed a project for Nice Blends. This North Carolina company has just launched Texas Pete® Sweet Potato Fries that combines the goodness of North Carolina sweet potatoes and the spiciness of a great North Carolina hot sauce. The challenge for this project was to make the package design, destined for the freezer case, to stand out from the competition and clearly state what makes these fries different at just a glance.

Account executive Trinity Lancaster and Jason Headrick, the art director, teamed on this project and their first step was to visit nearby supermarkets for a peek at the competition. Two dominant colors that would compete for consumer attention were a sweet potato orange and a white upscale design. Our philosophy is to go were there is no competition for color and the choice was a classic black. Jason utilized Texas Pete® branded logo in red and used the brand’s classic hot sauce bottle design as a cut out as if the heat had burned through the bag to reveal delicious sweet potato fries waiting for the dinner table.

Too frequently packaging intended for supermarkets fails to “pop” off the shelf. With roughly 22,000 items competing for the shopper’s attention, there is no greater challenge that to visually set a unique color background that varies from the competition and tell why the product is different and valuable to the end user. Next time you face a packaging challenge, look at the competition and set your own path to grab attention on the store shelf. Congrats to Trinity and Jason on a perfect package design.