Month: May 2022

Simantel kindly set the final team brief of the semester for the second section of students. This time just two teams, but as equally a challenging assignment as the morning teams at OneFire.

BUSINESS AND MARKETING GOALS

The new leaders wish to solidify the clients. brand reputation by carrying on their name and legacy.

They want to do this by deepening exiting relationships and growing new ones, ensuring they are clear on their marketing message, with appropriate materials to tell their story.

Ancillary Industry Targets: The client hopes the message Bradley helps create will translate to many audiences as they seek to continue to build relationships with area architects, industry associations and large general contractors where they might serve as a “sub contractor” (since they are smaller than most in our area.) The message may have to “pivot” so as not to seem competitive, but collaborative with various segments.

Channels:

• The client does very little in the way of marketing.
• All client names and addresses are stored; however, this is primarily used for invoice purposes not marketing purposes.
• The company receives emails with notices for opportunities to bid on projects – but this very reactive.
• The team does not sit on any community boards, nor are they involved in trade associations, though this is an area of interest to pursue further.
• The team is specifically interested in finding a list of developers in the area to set meetings with and introduce themselves/tell their story.
• The team does attend annual safety conferences/trainings, which serve as networking opportunities.
• They do not currently have a website or much of a social presence and the Facebook page is rarely updated with project examples.

Tactics:

• In the past, the team has discussed developing a letter “re-introducing” the firm to key customers or prospects.
• They’ve considered building a PowerPoint presentation providing an overview of services and setting meetings to tell their story.
• They do not have a brochure or any sales literature.
• They do buy “custom branded” wine for customers at Christmas time as an appreciation effort.
• They also have some promotional items (hats, sweatshirts, t-shirts, etc.)
• The company cars also have the logo, which offers some limited exposure in market.
• They’ve also considered building a portfolio of projects from small to large, with a case study of services.

And here are the two teams in action. Click on their photos to view their campaign presentations.

Once again, my friend Jim, and his colleagues at OneFire helped me with the final team brief for the Brand Experience class.

The brief was a particularly challenging one for the students:

Communications Objectives (What do we want the audience to do?
● Design and implement a strategy to create a more effective web presence that
differentiates the company and all of the products and services they sell and
attracts/converts targeted prospects, allowing them to be nurtured and converted to
customers
● Independent insurance agents who operate in this niche should be able to easily find the company when they are searching for a carrier in this space and, once found, understand
their unique distinctions
● Update corporate positioning to support Brand distinction and align with target audience
needs (at your option, this may or may not include the update of the corporate logo, be
prepared to defend your rationale for or against updating)
● Discover and understand the buyer’s journey and use that to guide marketing strategy
and tactics
● Create an inbound/outbound growth strategy

As usual, our students didn’t let us down, despite much of the language of the brief being a little different from what they have been familiar with. Here are the presentations from the four teams. Click on to the photo to view each campaign:

An often repeated/tweaked branding project to give the students an opportunity to get their ‘hands dirty’ with some 3D construction added to the branding aspect.

Essentially, a Hyvee three or four item gourmet/quality ‘meal to go’ branded packaging challenge that should work across a range of meals in the brand, has strong shelf presence, is stackable, easy to carry, protects the meal item contents – and takes into consideration sustainability and its environmental footprint – while being an original piece of packaging design, with strong surface graphics…. simple!

Here are all of the projects with extra images of some of the more unique/successful solutions:

Continue reading “Gourmet ‘Meal 2 Go’ Packaging”