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Strategy. It's at the heart of any good communication effort.
MGP
CREATE EXCEPTIONAL
Challenge:
MGP had no real brand in 2016. There was simply a collection of sales collateral with no personality, no brand voice, and no connection with their target audiences. In order to take advantage of the market conditions ripe for growth, MGP needed a solid foundation of a brand architecture on which to build.
Insight:
The production processes for distilling and food ingredients are both highly dependent on specialized expertise in the science involved, as well as the manufacturing scale. Customers in both segments already appreciated MGP’s abilities in these areas. Often, they were even surprised at the depth and breadth of that knowledge as the relationships grew.
Strategy:
Humanize the brand to create opportunities for building relevance, resonance and emotional connections with the target audiences, showcasing the willingness to share expertise.
Implementation:
Initiated brand archetype discovery and development process to establish optimal brand positioning and voice. Process included original qualitative research with cross section of MGP employees, management, board of directors, and customer bases to find the true personality of the company and how it could be utilized to align with the target audiences. Resulted in the discovery and development of MGP’s brand archetype as that of the Sage; the intelligent yet humble expert willing to collaborate and share wisdom.
Created the brand archetype blueprint – including brand voice and storytelling themes – to guide the infusion of the Sage into all creative work going forward in both the distilling and ingredients segments, as well as all corporate branding. Then executed this archetype-based storytelling in the campaigns for distilling and ingredients segments, amplifying the human element throughout everything.
Outcome:
Massive growth ensued in both segments, including double-digit YoY growth in sales, new customer acquisitions, profitability, and stock price increases over seven-year period.
COMMUNITYAMERICACREDIT UNION
JOIN IN.
Challenge:
CommunityAmerica had hit a plateau in their growth in 2005. The CEO set a BHAG of primary financial institution (PFI) market share for 10% of the consumers in the Kansas City metro market within 10 years. Hitting that goal would require significant changes in the branding and marketing since Kansas City is one of the most overbanked cities in the country on a per capita basis, and CommunityAmerica had a PFI market share of less than 2% at the time.
Insight:
Most consumers did not know the differences between credit unions and banks. They also had a prevailing fear of switching financial institutions, an inertia created by consumers thinking all banks are “equally bad, so why bother.”
Strategy:
Created differentiation through humor and approachability, attributes typically un-bank-like. Showed credit unions are inherently better than banks due to the cooperative business model built on doing what’s best for the customers, because they’re actually the owners of the institution.
Secondarily, we invited consumers into a movement – and educated them that they could – because not everyone understood how credit unions work. Leveraged the duality of this dynamic by making it feel inclusive yet exclusive at the same time, with a stirring and simple tagline that also served as a call-to-action: Join in.
Implementation:
Overhauled the brand personality and messaging to create a more compelling platform that would break through the clutter of bank marketing and resonate with households in the target market. Combined brand awareness messaging across all media channels with promotional campaigns geared toward attracting people to open a checking account, the gateway to, and metric for, primary financial institution status.
Extended this revamped brand expression to the in-branch environments, as well as the digital ecosystem that included pioneering on-line banking capabilities.
