IN Food Marketing & Design

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Product and Market Development Specialist of Forever Green Initiative

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We are a research and innovation platform housed within the University of Minnesota that works to introduce novel, sustainable crops and ingredients to the food, fiber, feed, and fuel industries.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire IN Food Marketing & Design to accomplish?

• Create a set of B2B marketing materials for Kernza perennial grain to include 4 how-to-use guides, a nutrition guide, environmental benefits guide, overview guide, branding kit, customer success stories, and updates to the website.

SOLUTION

How did you find IN Food Marketing & Design?

RFP

Why did you select IN Food Marketing & Design over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Company values aligned
• Demonstrated skill/portfolio

How many teammates from IN Food Marketing & Design were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

IN Food Marketing & Design was engaged to create a B2B marketing toolkit for Kernza perennial grain. The scope included project planning; website review and recommendations for improvement (PDFs of recommended new content and organization for web developer to use);brand kit based on existing assets; point of sale stickers, posters, and table tents; four "how to use Kernza guides"; 3 stories; and recommendations of photography. IN Food also executed a food products photoshoot.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

IN Food Marketing & Design completed all scoped deliverables with a high level of quality and professionalism.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

IN Food's project management was exceptional. Over the course of a long project, they never missed a detail. Communication was clear, effective, conscise, timely, and positive. The team demonstrated impressive flexibility for the evolving timelines inherent in our project.

What was your primary form of communication with IN Food Marketing & Design?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The team and their can-do attitude! IN Food Marketing & Design's team is cohesive and genuinely enjoys their day-to-day. They are talented, kind, and impressively efficient. Their depth of expertise in the food world is a huge asset to anyone looking for a firm in that space.

Are there any areas for improvement or something IN Food Marketing & Design could have done differently?

None I can think of. I would hire them again in an instant.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Digital Marketing Manager of BakeMark

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

BakeMark is North American's largest manufacturer and distributor of bakery ingredients. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire IN Food Marketing & Design to accomplish?

• Redo our Website
• Create a branding guidelines document

SOLUTION

How did you find IN Food Marketing & Design?

Online Search

Why did you select IN Food Marketing & Design over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Focus on Food Industry

How many teammates from IN Food Marketing & Design were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

InFoods was brought on initially to redo our company website as well as put together branding guidelines and strategy. 

For the Website the key initiatives were as follows:

• New look to co-incide with our branding project.
• Create dynamic charts based on potential customers geographic locations.
• Create a multi-language website with an ease to changing languages and not work too much on the back end. 
• Create back end ease to updates for the recipes and added pages for internal use. 

For the Branding Guidelines the key initiatives were:

• Create guidelines for people to use the company logo.
• Create logo options for other uses within media. 
• Create a cohesive look and message to launch and take to market. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

InFoods ability to meet tight deadlines and stay on track on major projects is a HUGE thing that has demostrated success for us. 

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Yes, they deliver items on time and are extremely responsive. I am always able to get informaiton from them when we need it and they go above and beyond in making sure they communicate back with all pertinent information. 

What was your primary form of communication with IN Food Marketing & Design?

Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

InFoods has really been able in a very short perios time capture the essence of what BakeMark is all about. They have been able to take the information we shared with them in what we are looking for and were able to provide a precise cohesive take to market strategy on who we are with a fresh look. 

Are there any areas for improvement or something IN Food Marketing & Design could have done differently?

Nothing that we have run into yet. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the national account sales manager of T. Marzetti Company, a specialty food service company. When I worked with IN Food I was the marketing director, though.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with IN Food Marketing & Design?

We needed help with our branded product portfolio.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Initially, they provided a roadmap and brand guidelines, and then they refreshed our creative, came up with the new brand tagline. We moved onto creating content, which included launching a blog and several social media platforms. They also managed all of our media buys and creative for publication. They rebuilt our website, too, though they used a third-party for the technical part. They still handled the creative on that and acted as our point of contact/project manager with the third-party.

With new product launches, they handled branding: everything from creative to packaging, design, and the media push behind it. They also pitched in on segmentation and targeting different channels, being more specific, and creating collateral for the field sales teams.

What is the team composition?

There are close to 20 people in the office, including account assistants, creatives, designers, and account managers, but we had three main contacts: Anita (President & Owner, IN Food & Marketing), Emily (Account Strategist, IN Food & Marketing) and Lori (VP & Creative Director, IN Food & Marketing). Emily was our day-to-day contact and Lori was the creative director. Their whole team worked well together, and we could tell the culture in their office was very strong.

Emily was our main point of contact and passed through any creative work, drafts of blogs, and articles. Her passion is social media and driving engagement and ideas. we loved her excitement, wealth of ideas, and passion for stewarding our brand through new territory.

How did you come to work with IN Food Marketing & Design?

We didn’t have brand awareness in the state, and the agency we’d historically used was just a media buyer. We were looking for someone to be an extension of our marketing team to help create a cohesive brand strategy.

We looked for someone with food-service experience. Not retail or consumer, but food service. After narrowing it down to a couple of agencies through an RFP, they became the clear frontrunner of the ones we interviewed.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $600,000–$800,000 annually with them, including media buying and all the creative services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them from July 2014 until December 2019. When I moved into sales, my replacement hired a different agency.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We did quarterly analytics reviews, but they still sent me monthly ones. We saw success in click-through rates, engagement, and time spent on site. There was also an uptick in certain placements in our e-newsletter, so we tweaked our spend that way and saw more traffic come in.

We also saw an influx in the amount of sales leads. We have a “contact us” section where we drove people to inquire or get a free sample. Sales leads from that tripled.

How did IN Food Marketing & Design perform from a project management standpoint?

They excelled at nimbly shaping our efforts based on analytics to make sure we went forward based on what was working and not working.

We had a biweekly call, and they maintained an Excel workbook. It had every project we were working on broken down by what needed approval, what was still on the docket, what they still owed us and what we owed them. They’re very organized, and we went through the workbook every week. I never felt like I didn’t know what was going on. If I was particularly busy, it helped me know where everything was.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They helped us test and learn about things we’d never done before, and they were awesome at seeking out new opportunities in media and social media. Additionally, they’re extremely hardworking, humble, passionate about solving our problems, and genuine.

When we were interviewing diff agencies, a lot of the questions people asked us were high-level. IN Food & Marketing, on the other hand, wanted to know my challenges in a detailed manner. They were more about problem-solving, rather than trying to meet their own needs. Finally, we felt we could trust them, and, being a smaller marketing team, that was so important.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It’s a smaller office, which works well in a lot of ways, but they do rely on a third-party for some things. Whenever you have a middleman, it slows things down a tad or causes a miscommunication sometimes. The cost also goes up a bit. If they could expand and do more in-house, it would help them. They’re still a full-service firm though.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be transparent with them about what’s going on within your company and the challenges you’re facing. This way, they can bring solutions that help more and open a long-term plan. The additional context helps.