The Journey is Better with Friends.
We here at The Embassy decided to brew up something other than a marketing campaign in celebration of fall – the Moosylvania Brewfest of 2011.
After voting on our favorite flavors, gathering the necessary supplies and delegating the Master Brewers, we began the brewing of our first Moosemade beer: a Moosylvania pale ale and a Moosylvania wheat beer (with crafty names and creative bottle labels coming soon).
Facebook-only promotions provide a lot of advantages, according to our CMO Rodney, as quoted in "4 Successful and Creative Facebook Contests" on Mashable.
To see examples of successful Facebook contests and to read the full story, click here.
On June 2, Moosylvania launched Show Me Art, Show Me Hope. We began with a goal to raise $1,000 to donate towards tornado relief efforts in Joplin, MO.
On July 31, the final poster was sold.
The Art for Joplin project, having been picked up by local media like KSDK News Channel 5 and the Maplewood-Brentwood Patch, was support not just in St. Louis, but also around the country. We heard from TakePart in California and had a CNN reporter from Atlanta reach out to us about our efforts. And, much to our designers’ delight, industry publications like grain edit, French Paper and Communication Arts featured our work on their sites, as well.
Even more importantly, though, was that our expectations were far exceeded. We hoped for the best, but what we achieved was much more.
Our posters now hang in homes from coast to coast, with a few even making their way to homes in Canada and one in Australia. All of these posters were purchased by those who had a passion to give to those affected by the tornado that struck down in southwestern Missouri on May 22, 2011.
We Moosers would like to thank everyone who donated time, dedication and money in support of this project.
On August 23, we were able to donate $15,000 to United Way towards the rebuilding of a town torn to pieces.
We showed you art, and you showed Joplin hope.
To see a snapshot of this project’s history, check out our Facebook album.
Moosylvania was presented with an exciting challenge from the Whataya Nuts brand. Given only a product concept and a name, we needed to take an everyday snack food – the nut – and create a new unique selling point that accurately connected with a specific target audience. From logo conception all the way through packaging, Moose was trusted to create the visual brand identity.
Starting the process with research, we identified beacon brands in the snack-food market and profiled various target audiences. From there, positioning statements were created and tested with our core users – 25-45-year-olds who frequently shop for snack foods. Insights were drawn from each group member, which were then used to refine and finalize the positioning statement, brand story and packaging.
And Whataya think happened? We landed on a snack that appeals to guys with a sense of humor (and what guy doesn't?). Whataya Nuts is the snack for the guy in his man cave, hanging with his buddies or on-the-go, simply needing to feel full. The logo uses humor to build an emotional connection, while allowing consumers to enjoy a positive brand experience before even sampling the product.
With all of these various elements in motion, it was crucial that a consistent thread connect the product and brand at every consumer touch-point. Implementation of this thread across social media, retail displays and support was the next step. All of these essentials combined and were able to increase the product sale points to 75% of Schnucks locations, as well as Jennifer's Pharmacy and select Straub's stores in the St. Louis area. We're proud to say the brand is now projected to expand to three new markets within the year.
"Almost Adults," a term created by those of us here at The Embassy in St. Louis, refers to the Millennial subset of 17-24 year-old students attending two- and four-year colleges and graduate schools – but that's not all they are.
Click here to read the full story.
This week's Lunch 'n Learn featured Erin Steinbruegge. Erin, the proud founder of The Loud Few, a division of Moosylvania specializing in Digital, led "Interactive Marketing 101."
After a brief history of her past experience (Did you know she used to work for AutoTrader?) and the goals of Interactive Marketing, Erin got into some of the key types of Interactive, including Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Strategy, E-Mail Marketing and even some insights into Mobile Marketing.
These were the insights from the presentation that stuck out the most:
Pay Per Click
The more you pay, the higher on the list of generated results. This is beneficial to utilize for promotional purposes or time-sensitive sites to generate high initial traffic.
Search Engine Optimization
The more your site pertains to a search, the higher on the list of organic results. In Erin's words, optimizing a site means, "being obsessive about making a site as good as possible for generating search engine results." SEO is "super measurable" and always gives you a high return on investment.
Social Media
Social media creates a conversation between clients and consumers instead of pushing a bunch of impressions using traditional mediums.
Fun Stats:
In concluding, Erin pointed out that digital agencies – such as Moosylvania – will be able to jump on emerging technologies in the future, and that, "traditional agencies will be left in the dust."
Experiential marketing works well because it gives consumers a way to truly engage with a brand. Here are a few tips to help you develop a more successful experiential campaign from start to finish, as well as some insider knowledge on the recruitment and management of volunteers.
Define Goals
Before diving headfirst into a new campaign, first determine exactly what you're trying to accomplish. Only after clearly defining goals and objectives can you start figuring out how to successfuly orchestrate a campaign.
Be Specific
Provide a detailed description of exactly what it is wanted for your experiential campaign. You know your business better than any agency. By providing details of what information should be included, you can better assure that goals will be reached.
Recruit Volunteers
Hiring volunteers is known to be a large financial benefit to any experiential marketing campaign. However, it is important to keep in mind how much hard event work a volunteer can manage. Here are a few tips to keep colunteers healthy, happy and willing ot return next time.
The interns worked together to create our very own Mario Kart show car for the Pinewood Derby, a fun networking event for St. Louis marketing companies. Using Sculpey, a stock derby car and some imagination, we worked hard to make our own version of Mario from Mario Kart.
After all of our hard work up in the choir loft, we headed down to the Thaxton to celebrate and size up the competition. With over 20 agencies in attendance, Coolfire Media hosted a great party; the rooms were filled with lights, fog and complimentary beverages. All that mixed with a sleek, fast track for the cars and a pair of lively hosts made for a great competition. With seven pools containing four contestant cars each, it was a nice win for the Anheuser-Busch team, who placed first with their speed car.
Since we had entered our Moosyl-Mario in the Showcar competition, it was a great time for the Moose interns and current Moosers to relax and enjoy the night sans pressure from the racetrack. We were able to mix and mingle with one another and others in the St. Louis network. Many of us also had our first Cha Cha Chow experience, nomming on their delicious tacos by the truck parked out back.
So, we may not have won, but we had a great time pooling our creativity and working together for a great cause: supporting the Ad Club of St. Louis Scholarship Fund.
On Friday, July 8, Moosylvania took part in the Let Them Eat Art festival right here in Maplewood, MO.
We had our friends at All Along Press print 50 of our Art for Joplin posters for people to purchase at our tent.
Between the proceeds from the posters and the money made by generous passers-by who just wanted to donate to our cause, we made an unbelievable $1,000 to donate to United Way to benefit the tornado relief efforts in Joplin!
Thanks to everyone for the immense support!
Everything They Didn't Teach You in School
This week's edition of Lunch 'n Learn continued with an advertising and marketing guru by the name of Mitch Meyers. Mitch, along with our CEO Norty Cohen (pictured above), used to work together at Zipatoni in downtown St. Louis. Mitch stunned the audience of interns and workers with no need of a PowerPoint or a visual presentation. She had one yellow piece of paper with a few scribbles and scratch bullet points, followed by something you can't teach: experience.
She began the presentation by touching on the do's and don'ts when first getting started with your career. She explained that it's not the route you take, but the way that you learn from each experience. She began on the client side working for Anheuser-Busch after getting her MBA in Finance. There she lived in a strict work environment and learned about the needs and wants from an inside perspective. She then flipped to the agency side, taking creativity by the reigns and masterfully using her background as helpful knowledge to deliver what clients needed.
Throughout her presentation, she maintained incredible eye contact and tone of voice with her audience, further showing why she was so successful. She expalined that at the end of every day, a client is just like you: a human being. She went on to talk about how multiple years with a client becomes a friendship as well as a business relationship.
The most intriguing part of her Lunch 'n Learn came at the end, when she put herself up for questions. She wasn't satisfied with the normal 2-4 questions, so she would use the technique of pushing the envelope. She'd continually ask the audience, "What else?!" Her eyes would survey across the room drawing everyone in and answer using real examples to make her point. It was extremely refreshing to not hear textbook answers and to understand how she interacted with each client.
Truly remarkable – thanks, Mitch!
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