Category: <span>Blog</span>

Izzy Gisondi Social Marketing Strategist

Think about a lemonade stand. Have you ever bought some just because a kid was selling it? Now imagine that same lemonade being sold by a random adult on the sidewalk. Would you feel just as compelled to stop? Probably not.

Why? Because a kid selling lemonade tells a story. They wanted to make money, asked their parents, and set up camp. It tells a story of a kid who had a dream and did it.

Storytelling in food marketing works, and it’s more important than ever.

Let’s dive into why storytelling resonates so deeply in food marketing and how brands can use it to build loyalty, trust, and emotional connection.

Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Are you currently launching innovative, new products for your food or beverage brand? Do you have ideas in the pipeline for the next 2-3 years? If not, you are already behind.

New product innovation is key to the success of every brand. If you’re simply relying on your current product offering for the future of your brand—then you don’t have a sustainable growth model.

Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Feelin’ a little tired and old? A little dated, perhaps? Do you feel like the young people aren’t giving you the attention you’ve earned and deserve? Nobody seems to care about you anymore. All that’s left to talk about are the “old” glory days?

You may have been “all that” back in the day, but now you’re a legacy brand that seems to have lost its luster with consumers.

Bob Hunsberger Associate Creative Director

It’s almost 2025; social media has been around for the better part of two decades. At this point, there are only two possible reasons that your brand isn’t prioritizing a social strategy:

Aksa Asgher Digital Advertising Manager
Allebach Communications

In today’s dynamic food advertising environment, brands must innovate to connect with consumers and stand out. Digital media has eclipsed traditional platforms, offering targeted and measurable advertising options. To thrive, brands must leverage these opportunities effectively.

Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Foodservice products represent a uniquely complex challenge for food and beverage marketers. Far more complicated than CPG food marketing, and far too many companies leaving the fate of their foodservice success solely in the hands of their sales team.

While sales teams and distributors play a crucial role in the success of any brand, those efforts must work in tandem with a solid marketing and brand program.

Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

“I vow to remain faithful to your brand…” said no consumer ever.

The great brand loyalty debate has been raging amongst CPG food marketers for years. Many modern marketers are suggesting that consumers are no longer brand loyal; they’re ready to throw in with a cheaper private label or a flashy, emerging brand at a moment’s notice. And while this may be true, I’d argue that it’s certainly not new. “Brand Loyalty” has always been more fiction than fact — a buzzwordy, mythological pipe dream that overzealous marketers sell to their clients.

Todd Bergey President

In today’s supermarkets, consumers are faced with a significant challenge that impacts their experience in every aisle: rising food prices. With this surge in costs, shoppers are reevaluating their purchasing habits, considering both necessity and value with each item they pull off the shelves.

Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Is your brand ready to make a splash in the OTT stream?

OTT (over-the-top) advertising bypasses traditional cable and broadcast platforms to deliver ads via streaming services, and it has quickly become one of the hottest and most effective mediums for food brands to communicate with consumers. It has made TV accessible to brands of all sizes and offers the ability to dial-in your targeting to new levels of precision.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Have you ever noticed when you see a thick, juicy steak sizzling in a butter-soaked pan with fresh herbs, you find yourself craving LongHorn or Outback Steakhouse for dinner? Or when a halftime ad shows a crisp amber spout of beer being poured into a chilled pint glass, you’re grabbing a tall, cold one from the fridge before the second half kicks off? Consumers can fight off those mouthwatering urges once or twice, but, eventually, you will give in to that appetite appeal.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

It’s 2024. If your food brand is still targeting women as their sole primary buyers, it may be time to get with the Bro-gram.

Statista recently published a report stating that 50% of men consider themselves to be the primary household grocery shopper. Other studies have that number as high as 60%. According to FMI’s Grocery Shopper Trends report, male shoppers take more frequent trips to the grocery store, they typically outspend females by $22 per week, and they tend to purchase more on impulse.

Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

“Our brand is really growing—we recently gained distribution in 1,000+ new retail outlets, and we’re getting more and more distribution by the day.”

I’ve heard this scenario a thousand times—and it doesn’t always turn out as well as you may think. Is new distribution a good thing? Of course. But it can also be the beginning of the end for a brand. I’ve seen it happen many times over the years, so much so that we’ve even coined a phrase for this particular phenomenon: Death by Distribution.

Ashlyn Allebach-Bergey Account Executive

Digital marketing strategy has always been a moving target. Great strategies from a year ago might fall flat in today’s ad landscape. Innovation is the name of the game. New platforms, trends, and tools are constantly changing the way we approach the brand-consumer relationship. Savvy marketers and forward-thinking agencies are harnessing these new tools and turning them into big wins for their clients.

Rick Wiener Media Director

Two of the hottest topics in food marketing are Shopper Marketing apps and the emergence of Artificial Intelligence. The conversation really gets interesting when these two topics collide, and we start to understand how AI can supercharge these apps to the benefit of the consumer, the supplier, and the platform.

Bob Hunsberger Associate Creative Director

In an era when social platforms have their own in-app shopping functions and affordable skynet-tier algorithms to target the masses, the direct-to-consumer model (D2C) is having a bonafide moment. More and more brands are prioritizing a robust ecommerce strategy, and much to the chagrin of the middleman wholesalers and retailers, it’s working.

Aksa Asgher Digital Advertising Manager
Allebach Communications

May is AAPI Heritage Month—a celebration of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States. With the month winding down, we want to spotlight some of our favorite AAPI-owned food brands. As a member of the AAPI community who works in digital advertising, I’m always searching for thought leaders and brands that find unique ways to incorporate their culture and share it with others. Here are three small business food brands doing just that!

Nathan Allebach Creative Director
The Steak-umm Twitter Guy
Adweek Top 100 Creative

Who are you? Who are your consumers? What’s your history? Your product? Your values? Your distinction? Identity is the bedrock of any brand. It’s marketing 101, baby. Netflix. Apple. Nike. The most iconic brands know who they are. They know their workers and customers alike. They own a unique aesthetic and sell more than just a good or service—they sell a lifestyle to aspire toward. Capturing that essence is rare for a range of reasons. A common one is that many companies have a disjointed idea of who they are. The CEO might see the brand differently from the sales team, who may see it differently from customer service. The identity has to be unified from within through policies, practices, and messaging—it’s who a company hires, how they treat their workers, what their offices look like, and how they give back. Brands often hire consultants or agencies to help guide this process that culminates in a unified front.

Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

You hear a lot these days about how consumers are no longer loyal when it comes to CPG food and beverage brands; that they quickly trade-off for private label or newer, emerging brands. And this is quite true. But I’d like to suggest that “brand loyalty” is largely a myth fabricated by overzealous marketers. One of the many snake oil sales tactics in this business.

Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Functional foods. We’ve all heard the term. We know that in the past functional foods were considered to be foods that had a potentially positive effect on health beyond their basic nutritional value. For instance, oatmeal contains soluble fiber that can help lower cholesterol. Or salmon is an excellent functional food because the omega-3 fatty acids can reportedly decrease the risk of heart disease.

But today, functional foods mean so much more to both consumers and brands.

Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

When I was a teenager, my dad would say, son “clean up your act.” Basically, he was telling me to get the crap out of my life that was dragging me down. And, today, for food brands, I would say the same thing…you need to “clean up your act.”

The bottom line is that we live in a new era of food. Consumers simply expect more from the food brands they buy. The bar is higher than it was 10-15 years ago. Even “clean label” has been taken to an entirely new level; real ingredients, nutrition, functional benefits, claims, certifications, sustainability, and on and on.

Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Many CPG food brands are continuing to see record sales growth. However, there are many questions that accompany this growth…How long will this growth continue? When will this spike start trending down? Should we increase capacity? How can we reach and retain the new households that have purchased our brand—some for the first time? Will we see sustained growth? If so, what will it be…2%, 5%, 10% or more?

Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

“Consumers are currently purchasing my brand 5 times. If I could increase their buy rate to 6, I could grow sales by…” I’ve heard this theory/thought-process a thousand times. And the fact of the matter is—it doesn’t work. If your goal is to grow your brand, this strategy will never get you there.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Due to the current COVID-19 crisis, food and beverage companies are having to navigate unchartered waters when it comes to sourcing raw materials, workforce sustainability, retailer demand, consumer consumption, and overall brand management. Read more…

Nathan Allebach Creative Director
The Steak-umm Twitter Guy
Adweek Top 100 Creative

The coronavirus has infected every aspect of our lives. Our loved ones, small businesses, our global economies, governments, and our entire online discourse. People are on edge and exhausted, but they can’t look away from the screen. Updates are constant and confusing. Misinformation is everywhere. Some companies are cutting hours, some are going out of business, and others can’t keep up with demand as their products literally fly off the shelves from panic purchases.

Scott Cooter Creative Director / Senior Copywriter

No, that’s not a typo – Incogmeato’s a clever new brand name for a new line of plant-based burgers, brats and Italian sausage poised to begin hitting backyard grills across America during the next few months, just in time for prime grilling season. As the name suggests, the goal for the products was that they be indistinguishable from their traditional meat-based counterparts.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

We are living in very unique times for food and beverage brands. In years past, brands could simply keep producing and selling the same old “go-to’s” year after year. Sometimes decade after decade. And maybe come up with a new twist, flavor, or product extension every few years.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

There’s lots of great things happening in the world of food. Innovation is at an all-time high. Brands are working hard to clean-up their labels and ingredients. Sustainability is top-of-mind. And, better-for-you, healthier foods continue to grow.

Nathan Allebach Creative Director
The Steak-umm Twitter Guy
Adweek Top 100 Creative

A look into what brands have done and can do on the new video platform

Scott Cooter Creative Director / Senior Copywriter

By now, you’ve probably heard of TikTok, the hot video editing and sharing channel that’s been covered in The New York Times, Business Insider and Cnet, as well as featured on the Ellen DeGeneres show (Ellen now has her own TikTok channel). Grubhub used it for a takeover to download the Grubhub app (1.4 billion downloads). This spring, Jimmy Fallon used TikTok to kick off his new Tonight Show Challenges segment with the hashtag #tumbleweedchallenge, where viewers made videos of themselves rolling around like tumbleweeds (8,000+ submissions and 10M+ engagements in under a week).
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Scott Cooter Creative Director / Senior Copywriter

Snack-naming trends

Consumer attitudes toward snacking are changing, driven in a large part by the millennial audience. Where older generations viewed snacks as guilty pleasures, millennials’ insistence on socially aware, better-for-you food has created cross-over snacks requiring no discretion.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

I see soooo many food and beverage brands just pushing out the same old content on social media…nice food pic, talk about how great my brand is, more food pics, maybe a happy kid, throw in a packaging shot or two…predictable, boring, and most importantly …UNEFFECTIVE!
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Nathan Allebach Creative Director
The Steak-umm Twitter Guy
Adweek Top 100 Creative

It’s no secret that a wave of brands have hit Twitter and Instagram in recent years to build their audiences. The big question is, why? Facebook once dominated this space. Brands joined in droves, creating pages and amassing likes. Although it’s still a corporate monolith with advertising dollars that easily outperform every other platform (besides Google), it’s lost nearly all media attention and hype. Facebook has become the rejected childhood toy of the bunch. Everyone still has one, but no one wants to play
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Scott Cooter Creative Director / Senior Copywriter

The new IRI New Product Pacesetters report is out. And although their findings indicate mass market is still in decline overall, it seems that smartly targeted markets are growing. And that has more to do with how accurately the opportunity has been forecast than the size (and depth of the pockets) of the company bringing it to market. Small Companies (annual sales under $1 billion) are doing a better job of understanding how consumer wants and buying practices are evolving, targeting an opportunity, then moving quickly to deliver the right product to the right audience at the right time.
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Scott Cooter Creative Director / Senior Copywriter

Can social responsibility truly build sales for your brand? In a word, YES.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

When consumers are looking…is your CPG food or beverage brand anywhere to be found?

In order to be found, you have to occupy space in two places: 1) in the minds of consumers, and 2) on the shelf at retail.
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Nathan Allebach Creative Director
The Steak-umm Twitter Guy
Adweek Top 100 Creative

Everyone is trying to do everything with their brands these days. There’s so much content competing for clicks and attention real estate every moment of every day in every category. Competition is inevitable. Inundation is everywhere. So what can we do about it? Read more…

Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Price promotions. I like to refer to them as the race to the bottom. Who can win the competition of having the lowest price and commoditizing their brand?
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

“Be slow to speak and quick to listen.” I’m sure you’ve heard this familiar proverb. We all need to practice being better listeners, right?
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Scott Cooter Creative Director / Senior Copywriter

As food marketers, we tend to think that telling potential customers how delicious our products are is enough. It’s why most new product launches and ad campaigns simply feature high-appetite food photography showing products at their mouthwatering best. Add a headline calling out product attributes and a few lines of aspirational body copy, slap “New” on it, and call it a day.
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Nathan Bachynski Digital Marketing Coordinator

How much time do you spend on social media each day? 5 minutes, 10 minutes—some, even couple hours. Just think about that, then think about how there are currently over 3 billion social media users and that 69% of US citizens use some type of social media. To put that into perspective, that’s roughly 225 million pairs of eyeballs that could potentially be seeing and spending time with your brand!
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

People are posting thousands of images every day—of the food they are eating! Instagram alone has hundreds of millions of posts, pics, and videos just about food.

So, why is #foodporn so obscenely successful on social media? Lots of reasons, let’s start with some of the basics…
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Nathan Allebach Creative Director
The Steak-umm Twitter Guy
Adweek Top 100 Creative

Across the landscape of social media platforms there seems to be an endless set of tools to utilize for your content creation. Emoji’s, memes, Vine-style videos, long-form videos, branded photography, text joke formats, leetspeak, the list goes on. One tool that users have been all over the past few years has been GIFs. The GIF file was invented by Steve Wilhite in 1987 and they’ve been around since the beginning of Internet culture in one form or another. The “dancing baby” and “hamster dance” were classics from the late 1990s. Countless GIFs were shared across Myspace in its heyday and many more are created every day on platforms like Twitter or Reddit.
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Scott Cooter Creative Director / Senior Copywriter

Want to win in the frozen aisle?
Be dull.

During a recent shopping trip to the frozen section at my local Walmart, I was struck by how difficult it was to find the products I was looking for, even when I had a general idea of where they should be.
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Nathan Allebach Creative Director
The Steak-umm Twitter Guy
Adweek Top 100 Creative

A new fusion of advertising, smart technology, and online culture is integrating more into our lives every day. As we integrate, advertising does the same. Read more…

Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

I hope there’s no one reading this article who is still targeting women 25-54, to advertise their food or beverage brand. If you are, please call me. I can help.
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Scott Cooter Creative Director / Senior Copywriter

Love is cheap. Desire sells products.

Okay, we’ve written about Love and Love Brands before (spoiler alert: it’s really just ‘like’). Truth be told, love is not what you’re after.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Marketing vs. Sales—an age-old rivalry. “Sales are down because ‘marketing’ isn’t supporting our brand with the consumer.” “The new product launch failed because ‘sales’ didn’t do their job!”
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Having been in CPG marketing, and primarily working with food brands, for nearly 30 years, there have always been certain constant pivotal drivers in consumer purchasing — the “go-to”s that always drive consumer response. Well, things are changing. In fact, there has been a definitive paradigm shift that all marketers should be paying close attention to.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

No, seriously—would you date your brand? Humans are designed for personal interaction with each other. Basic attraction, compatibility, and the desire for relationships are what draw us together.
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Todd Bergey President

Just hearing the word audit can send even some of the most organized companies into a state of panic – that is if you are referring to a financial audit.
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Nathan Allebach Creative Director
The Steak-umm Twitter Guy
Adweek Top 100 Creative

A quick Google search can get you all the latest trends, algorithms, or strategies to reach whatever social media goal you want, right? Self-appointed influencers and other social “experts” know exactly how to make your brand successful, right? Everyone thinks they have the answers on social media. Most of them are probably wrong. But we’re in the wild west, so really anything goes.
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Scott Cooter Creative Director / Senior Copywriter

According to popular belief (and many old studies), millennials are not particularly brand loyal, with theories ranging from low attention spans to price-sensitivity due to lower income levels as being the cause. However, according to a new study just released by the National Retail Federation, all that begins to change once millennials become parents themselves and start shopping for their own families.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

“Our target audience is women, ages 25-54!”

For decades CPG food and beverage brands have used this key demographic targeting the primary, kingpin shopper of every household. So, why change? After all, women still do all the shopping, right? Sounds kinda stupid when you say it out loud.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

I wrote an article about 5 years ago about how “Likes” are good, “Comments” are great, but “Sharing” is GOLD! Although social media has radically changed over the past few years, some of this thought process still remains relevant. Yes, engagement has changed, but it’s still key to success.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Food and beverage brand managers often dream of the idea that consumers are having wonderful conversations about their brand. That people everywhere are sharing the good news of the glory of their brand. Telling all their friends. Sharing on social media. Talking to strangers in the supermarket.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Think about your ownable brand assets that are distinctively yours, and no other brand can claim. It may be your name, logo, art, icon/symbol, personality, jingle, packaging, tagline, etc. Do you have such assets, AND, are you leveraging these assets to their fullest?
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Rick Wiener Media Director

In today’s cluttered environment, it is becoming more and more difficult for a small CPG brand to make an impact in the marketplace. However, if these small and upcoming brands follow a few basic marketing and advertising strategies, there is a way to cut through and make a name for themselves.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

When it comes to marketing food and beverage, there are many nuances to an effective program. However, I have found that there are two foundational cornerstones that every successful brand has in common: MENTAL and PHYSICAL AVAILABILITY. Do consumers know and remember you, when they are ready to purchase—and can they find you, in-store when they are looking.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Appetite appeal rules the day for food and beverage CPG brands. And one of the best social media platforms to showcase your brand is Instagram. There are many tasty reasons why food and beverage is such a popular visual on Instagram. Let’s be honest: we all love a mouth-watering food shot — well-lit, crisp, close-up, cool context, it just makes us hungry or thirsty!

Dale New Vice President of Account Services

As food marketers, we keep hearing it over and over again… “Consumers are looking for healthier eating options” – especially Millennials. In fact, according to the polls, 80% of people are “trying to eat healthier.”¹ (As Yoda said, “Do or do not. There is no try.”) Meanwhile, everyone in the food industry is searching for the “Holy Grail” of healthy, nutritious, minimally processed and convenient. Oh, and it has to taste good too. But wait… in the real world, the relative significance of all of those factors is literally the difference between success and failure.

Todd Bergey President

While the answers to this question may differ dramatically, the reality is that this is a very fair and warranted question. If you’ve done any research on this topic or have personal experience on how this question can be answered, you are keenly aware that the answer is very much related to the strategy and execution of the advertising campaign – aka, this is a loaded question. The truth is, every brand manager should be prepared with a strong rationale for how to answer this question.
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Todd Bergey President

Getting your marketing strategy right is crucial for the success of your overall marketing plan. However, strategy development is not a straightforward process and requires continuous evaluation. Whether you’re in the discovery or execution phase, your approach to the process greatly impacts your chances of success.
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Christian Betlyon Director of Strategy & Digital Services

Marketing is more complicated than it ever has been. We have unbelievable access to data and so much of it that we can use to improve our marketing and increase results. This can be overwhelming for marketers and brand managers because there are so many questions to ask:
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

The pathway to purchase for moms buying snacks can be an emotional, trying journey. The struggle is real. Moms are on the frontlines, fighting the fight, battling against what her family wants vs what she feels is best or “better” for them, what will make her life easier vs what they will enjoy, and so on.

It can be a real quest.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

We all love a good cliché. Especially in marketing. And, if we repeat it enough, it becomes gospel. For instance, the 80/20 rule (the Pareto Principle). Have you ever said something like; “80% of my brand sales are coming from 20% of my consumers, so we need to focus on the loyalist”? Or “we need a better customer loyalty program”? Or better yet, “I want to focus more marketing dollars on my brand advocates, ambassadors, loyalists, yada, yada, yada”?
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Todd Bergey President

In a recent article, I discussed how to better understand what your data is telling you, which leads in to the important topic of market selection.
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Dale New Vice President of Account Services

Last week, we touched on the importance of your packaging (hint: it’s the single-most critical and cost effective marketing tool you have) and the first sign (is it more than 3 years old?). If you missed the article, you can find it here [link]. This week, we’ll cover signs 2 – 8 that you should consider a refresh.
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Dale New Vice President of Account Services

Dollar for dollar, your packaging is arguably the most important and cost effective marketing money you’ll ever spend. Consider that it’s your only branding vehicle seen by 100% of your consumers. What’s more, those consumers are influenced by it at the exact moment of decision. (Significantly, 90% of shoppers make impulse purchases. And statistics vary, but they all indicate that between 50% and 67% of ALL grocery store purchases are purely impulsive. Even with shoppers who use lists, the opportunity is always there to sway them to your brand at the last moment.)
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

How often have you been under fire at a meeting with questions like these: “What’s going to be the ROI from this marketing program?” “How can you expect me to invest in those markets without a definitive ROI?” Or statements like: “There’s no ROI from TV, radio, and outdoor.” Mostly from well-meaning executives who want to make sure that marketing dollars are being stewarded and invested in the most effective way.
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Christian Betlyon Director of Strategy & Digital Services

Every day there are countless pieces of content seeking our attention in social newsfeeds, on digital radio stations, podcasts, YouTube channels – you name it. We pay attention to the content that interests us, adds value to our lives or taps into a current emotional state.Read more…

Todd Bergey President

Wading through CPG Data can be daunting, so find what’s important.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

For years now, the holy grail of marketing has been to forge a love bond with your consumers. As marketers, we’ve been taught that creating a deep and lasting personal “relationship” with this core audience is the key to brand success. According to the Pareto Principle, 80% of our profits will come from just 20% of our customers. It’s the basis for targeting our “loyal” followers with the bulk of our marketing efforts and budgets.
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Todd Bergey President

Not so much.

In the CPG world, we all know the constant pressure that is placed on brands to deliver trade programs that retailers will like and in many cases – what retailers are dictating.
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Scott Cooter Creative Director / Senior Copywriter

What’s the sweet spot for snack sales?

In a word, Millennials.

According to the latest Mintel¹ report, 15% of snackers are always hungry. But the real sweet spot is 18-34 year-olds, where one in four (25%) say they’re hungry all day, every day, seven days a week.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

#3 Consumers Are Snacking More & More & More
IRI data shows that there has been a 3% increase in the number of consumers snacking more than five times per day. Currently, 14% of people snack five or more times a day in addition to their regular mealtimes. IRI predicts this will continue to rise in 2017.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Building, Maintaining & Leveraging
Memory Structures

The human brain is complex. So, too, are memories which utilize all of your senses to link and retain information: how things look, sound, feel, taste and smell are all part of it.Read more…

Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

If you read between the lines of Kantar Worldpanel’s most recent Brand Footprint report, which tracks the “150 most chosen consumer brands,” you can connect the dots on some new ways to grow your brand you may not have considered before.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Brands can market to their consumers in two major ways: TARGETED MARKETING, which is selling to a specific segment of buyers, and MASS MARKETING, which is selling to all buyers. So which of the two ways is most effective? Read more…

Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Anyone who has worked in marketing for even a few weeks knows the following 3 “written in stone” dictums:Read more…

Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

It’s surprising how much focus too many marketers still place on the nebulous metric of “engagement.” Yes, social media engagement is an important measure of consumer response. It’s an indicator that your brand is making some sort of connection with people. Read more…

Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

It’s everywhere. On the streets, in our office, and in every retail and food store I’ve visited the past 2 weeks. Pokémon took over my life back when I was a kid and is doing so again now with the revolutionary virtual reality game, Pokémon Go.Read more…

Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Facebook Live has a story to tell – what’s yours?
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Okay, it’s a great song (and, coincidentally, great YouTube video of a dancing baby in diapers). But why do I bring it up here?
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

With new technologies constantly evolving each day, people have become mostly un-phased by some of the recent leaps in media. Take for example, drones: At one point, the idea was a joke, then it became a topic of fear, then ever so slowly, they became integrated into every day life to the point where hardly anyone thinks twice about them. That’s exactly how artificial intelligence (AI) is – and no other new tech is changing the media world quite like it. AI is changing our use of smartphones, social media, and many other aspects of the marketplace.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Marketing research firm, MarketingSherpa asked consumers how they would prefer to receive communications from brands and retailers. For those of us in the ad biz who are lustily embracing every new social/digital media that flies down the WorldWide InterWeb SuperHighway @ us, its insights are surprising. Stunning, even.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Email—it’s simply one of the most effective digital marketing tactics today, and with good reason. Despite the insurgence of social media as a form of communication, email still rules! Here’s why:
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Back in the Sixties when Beatlemania was at its peak, John, Paul, George and Ringo were the best-known names in music, greeted by hordes of screaming fans everywhere they went, including The Ed Sullivan Show. As the Fab Four took the stage to swing into ‘She Loves You,’ scores of sobbing, emotionally-smitten teenage girls watched enraptured, tears streaming down their faces.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Couponing remains one of the most effective ways to drive trial and create loyalty among consumers. However, finding the best vehicle to reach a consumer can be a challenge.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

In our first influencer marketing blog we introduced you to the fundamentals, now it’s time to step up your game.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

It happened with the explosion of social media… new marketing trends & tactics come in hot and a wave of “experts” pop out of the woodwork. As we head into 2016, we’ll see it continue with the rise of influencer marketing.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

As everyone knows, millennials not only grew up online, they did it with cell phones tucked into their back pockets. And now that the two have merged to become the mobile world, it’s only natural that millennials are leading the way in all things mobile, including mobile purchases. And their purchasing power is growing.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

You may have heard that programmatic advertising is revolutionizing the media landscape, or that it’s changing the face of online ad buying…but what is it? Is this just another shiny new toy?
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

In 2015, television remains the most results-successful advertising medium, according to new research conducted by marketing-analytics company MarketShare (Download full report). From 2009 to 2014, TV beat digital and offline channels in driving sales and new business for major advertisers.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Well, it’s official — YouTube is now a legitimate challenger as the entertainment channel of choice for the youth demographic. Need proof? Look no further than Forbes.com’s just-breaking list of 2015’s ten highest-paid YouTube stars.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

There are many tasty reasons why food is such a popular visual on Instagram. Let’s be honest: we all love a mouth-watering food shot — well-lit, crisp, close-up, cool context, it just makes you wanna take a bite!
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

For some time now, Pinterest has been in the enviable position of being the #1 social platform that consumers go to when planning long-term purchases. Of course, being #1 and having the ability to monetize it are two entirely different things.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

In 1988, the longest running #1 single on the Billboard music charts was “Roll With It” by Steve Winwood, which topped the charts for 4 weeks.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

As an avid pinner and marketing professional, I find the interest in Pinterest (yes, I can rhyme any time) as a long-term brand relationship builder fascinating, as well as personally vindicating. Years ago, I suggested a client of ours should begin posting images on home improvement boards to show aspiring homeowners the family rooms and kitchens their home equity loans had been — or could be — used for. Sadly, it went nowhere… but the seed had been planted.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

More and more, consumers are Googling food brands they hear about and shopping online.

Here are 10 very vital statistics having to do with marketing food & beverages to increasingly health-conscious buyers in the digital age.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Believe it or not, simply being active and engaged in social media is the baseline entry point these days. You’re no longer on the social frontline anymore just by having your brand on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, etc. The new bar is now having content that’s worth sharing.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Social media has changed the shopping experience for everyone—brands, retailers, and consumers. Social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, Vine, Snapchat, Tumblr, and others are now a constant and significant influence on what, where, and how often consumers buy.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

There are 80 million Millennials—24.5% of the US population. They are the largest adult generation, ever and are projected to account for 30% of retail sales by 2020—surpassing Baby Boomers!
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

As a college student finishing up my senior year, one of my final requirements to graduate is to log a certain number of hours at an internship. Many people I’ve talked to dread this part of their college career, saying it’s just a waste of time and that they’d never do it again. Are internships as bad as they sound, or could they be one of the best decisions you’ve ever made? As I’m halfway through the fall semester as well as my internship with Allebach Communications, I thought it would be helpful to explore what an internship really is in this essay.
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Scott Cooter Creative Director / Senior Copywriter

Real-Time targeting capabilities push Pandora to the top of the charts.
There’s a good reason traditional broadcast radio is a valued part of most media plans year after year. It offers high reach, good targetability, and extraordinarily low costs compared to TV.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Consumer food brands often wrestle with effectively bridging the gap between online and in-store shoppers–most of the time over complicating the marketing process. It’s simple; most consumers discover your brand online, and then activate in-store.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

It’s official: YouTube is now second to only Google itself in terms of search queries. Which only makes sense — when we want information about something, we Google it, but when we want to know how to use something or cook it properly, we visit YouTube to watch a video on the right way to do it.
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Jennifer Scheel Account Executive

As I look back at my notes from the Path to Purchase Institute’s Shopper Marketing Summit last week, I realize just how much there is to share. Rather than overwhelming you, I will provide a few bullets for you to think about.
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Nancy Landis Account Coordinator

“Mobile is too big of an opportunity for retailers to not properly seize.” says Adam Lavine, CEO of FunMobility. Mobile presents many strategic advantages for retailers to differentiate their brand, strengthen customer relationships and loyalty, and ultimately drive revenue. While nearly 83% of the top retailers already provide a mobile offering, there are only one-in-three who actually provide all three platforms – mobile web, iOS and Android.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

As a brand, your digital presence is incredibly important. It should be a given that brands regularly post new content on their website and across all social media platforms. It keeps consumers informed, provides access to up-to-date information on your products and helps keep your presence on the web relevant (from a search engine standpoint and to the consumer). Nothing is worse than going to a website to look up information and finding something incorrect or outdated, or going to a brand’s Facebook or Twitter page and seeing their last post was from 6 months ago.
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Joey Piazza Digital Director

On Monday of this week, Google announced that it would be ending the RSS service “Google Reader” which was a content aggregator that is still widely used by a very core group of enthusiasts. So if the audience is there and the service is being used then why would they go out of their way to upset a very loyal and vocal readership? In order to answer this I think we have to look at what RSS provides and what recent developments in technology have meant for the service.
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Scott Cooter Creative Director / Senior Copywriter

Nudge-Nudge, Wink-Wink
In case you didn’t know it, March is International Mirth Month. And in honor of this momentous occasion, we’re focusing on ad concepts and headlines based on familiar phrases, puns and clichés. After all, some of the most memorable campaigns ever created were simply new spins on old one-liners.
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Jennifer Scheel Account Executive

I just came across a very interesting article on eMarketer.com that I thought worthy of sharing: Brands Leverage Influencers’ Reach on Blogs, Social.

In summary, this article explains the value of blogger outreach campaigns:
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Nancy Landis Account Coordinator

I recently read an article, “Chiquita Goes Mobile with Little League Baseball” , that immediately had me cheering: “Way to think outside of the box Chiquita!” “ Great idea!” “Perfect target!”. Chiquita bananas have been a long-standing favorite of mine; the perfect fruit, with its own wrapper, sweet, not messy, great grab-n-go snack. With four active kids, it was often a fruit I picked up as the snack mom providing something nourishing for the team. When I read that Chiquita Brands had leveraged a three-year partnership with Little League Baseball, I was excited! They have stepped into the perfect fit – Mom’s shopping for healthy choices for their family, parents providing snacks for sports teams, kids wanting a grab-n-go, fun snack.
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Jennifer Scheel Account Executive

As discussed in last week’s post Who’s Who With Your Brand, all consumers fall into one of three basic profiles: Devoteds, Temperates or Dabblers.

You may not believe that a cheese manufacturer has the same consumer profiles as a pork processor, but read on and you will see that they do.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

In food marketing it’s expected that customer segmentation and profiling is part of the marketing strategy and planning process. Often times, this can be overly complex, and, in typical marketing fashion…not very practical or actionable.
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Scott Cooter Creative Director / Senior Copywriter

We’ve all heard the Six-Second Billboard Rule: how any information the viewer can’t absorb in six seconds is wasted.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Just about a year ago Dole began their “366 Ways to Go Bananas” or “A Banana a Day” promotion to support their three-year-long “Go Bananas” concept. The overall goal is to encourage Americans to use and incorporate bananas in their diet outside of just breakfast and lunch– which would increase the overall sales of bananas.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

I recently read an article in Path to Purchase which called attention to Triad’s Pinterest Board, Ads: Then & Now.
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Scott Cooter Creative Director / Senior Copywriter

The holiday shopping season is finally upon us. With Thanksgiving less than a week away, our mailboxes have been packed with Black Friday and Pre-Black Friday mailers and flyers for weeks now. Ditto the Sunday papers: stuffed to the gills with inserts from every retailer you can think of.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

In the marketing world, “brands” have always been the epicenter of our being. The very reason for our existence. Dominating retail space and the hearts and minds of consumers…THE BRAND. However, over the years, we’ve noticed a shift in the retail landscape. The transformation of private label to—the PRIVATE BRAND.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

It’s nothing new for a brand to incorporate digital elements to engage and interact with consumers. They have a website, Facebook page, or Twitter account to become more interactive and engage their audiences. In fact, it’s generally expected. Consumers have become accustomed to interacting with their favorite brands and sometimes getting exposed to new brands based on these customer experiences, especially with the viral nature of the consumers sharing their content.
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Jennifer Scheel Account Executive

Last week was the Shopper Marketing Expo, put on by the Path to Purchase Institute in Chicago, IL. The best of the best in shopper marketing were there sharing valuable information. I attended four sessions and found some common themes running throughout:
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Joey Piazza Digital Director

The short answer to this question…No..and Yes.
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Nancy Landis Account Coordinator

I have a tendency to do my food shopping on the fly, tucking it into the empty spots in my schedule, often when something on my list has become a critical need. I am going in for items that I buy regularly, know where they are, know what they look like, and have calculated how long it will take me to conquer my list. I enjoy the activity of hunting down and gathering the items on my list, much like a scavenger hunt. My challenge is when I find myself in front of a display shelf, looking for “my product”. It can almost feel like a personal offense when I cannot find something that I have purchased regularly.
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Scott Cooter Creative Director / Senior Copywriter

How much time does it take to engage an audience? A rodeo bull rider gets it done in 8 seconds: 1,200 horsepower nitro-burning fuel dragsters do it in under 5.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Combining street food convenience and restaurant quality, mobile kitchens are bringing good, cheap food to a pavement near you. And while some industry observers had begun to dismiss food trucks, declaring them promotional ploys or training wheels for brick-and-mortar – they are far from reaching their peak. Food trucks are like a test kitchen on wheels. From tacos, to falafels, to waffles – food trucks are known for their creative ingredients and newly fabricated cuts of meat, and artisan beverages.
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Jennifer Scheel Account Executive

Too often brands are busy promoting themselves rather than becoming a trusted resource and/or partner. Brands need to earn the right to tell consumers how great they are. I ran across two sites and a blog recently that are doing a great job of becoming a partner/resource.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Over the past few years we have seen the implementation or QR codes increase. We have seen this on the shelves in stores, on product packaging, print ads, posters and business cards. They are being used everywhere.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

Fact: The majority of people prefer to watch instead of read.

Don’t believe it?Read more…

Jennifer Scheel Account Executive

We all know what a sell sheet or product information brochure is, and the information it needs to contain — SKUs, sizes, who to call — but there are two things that are often forgotten: Appetite Appeal and WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?).
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Scott Cooter Creative Director / Senior Copywriter

Making a brand memorable
What do you do when you’re one of the best-known brands in the world and want to come up with a new brand message?
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Jennifer Scheel Account Executive

You’ve heard about Pinterest and that it’s the new “big marketing idea,” but you may be wondering just how to really make it actionable. There are many companies out there giving it a try: Country Outfitters, Wilton, and Naturalizer, just to name a few.
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Scott Cooter Creative Director / Senior Copywriter

How food manufacturers can reach their audience via Pinterest

Ever heard of the social media site Pinterest? If not, you’d better read up on it quickly. Most of today’s savvy marketing managers use it already — and those who don’t are scurrying to catch up.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

On April 17, 2009, Oprah sent out her first tweet on Twitter.com. For interested parties the Tweet said: “HI TWITTERS. THANK YOU FOR A WARM WELCOME. FEELING REALLY 21st CENTURY.” My first thought, as a marketer, was that the tipping point was just televised. Even better, if I required concrete confirmation it came a day later in numbers: Twitter saw a whopping 37% increase in visits to the Twitter.com homepage. All new visitors. Each one signing up for a Twitter account.Read more…

Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

I read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell before I was familiar with viral marketing or social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.
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Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

If you aren’t familiar with Facebook – as of January 2009 the social networking site is 175 million members strong and growing at the rate of 5 million per week – and the site’s addictive, randomly generated newsfeed that is the site’s homepage, informing members of their friends status updates and fan groups their individual friends have joined, then perhaps you need to come out of the cave you call home. After all, it’s a Facebook nation – and as marketers, small and large, we need to harness the word-of-mouth, viral power that drives this beyond popular site.Read more…

Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

We think so. And, I am not talking about weight loss or smaller cell phones. We’re talking agencies. Not Ogilvy, not Y&R… boutique agencies.Read more…

Jamie Allebach Chief Executive & Creative Officer

There aren’t too many industries that have enjoyed an upswing during the past two years of the downward economy. That is, with the exception of private label food brands. Once akin to the dorky guy no one wanted to date, Wegmans, Target, even Walgreen’s Drug Stores, seeing their chance to woo shoppers with lower costs, improved quality and packaging, and raised expectations in terms of overall use, have created desirable private label products that no consumer is ashamed to take out for dinner – or breakfast, or lunch.Read more…

Nancy Landis Account Coordinator

You heard the sayings, “You had to be there” and “If you only knew…”. There are the times when you wish you could be “there” or have other people understand what you are experiencing. This was my heart was this past week as my daughter, along with a team of 27, was on a missions trip in Haiti.Read more…