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Working for peanuts and loving it!
In 1935, Julian D. Cromer opened a peanut stand in Columbia, South Carolina. An overzealous competitor told customers that his peanuts were the best and Cromer’s were the worst. In an inspired marketing tactic, Cromer responded to this underhanded selling attack by posting a sign beside his peanuts which read “Guaranteed Worst In Town!” A local legend was born.
Over the years, Cromer’s grew to become a major manufacturer and marketer of snack foods, concession and party supplies and equipment, advertising specialties, promotional products, gift boxes, flags, banners and tickets.
In 2010, Cromer’s management contacted Freebairn for help in selling more of their gourmet peanut and popcorn products. We recommended utilizing Internet marketing tools and developed a strategy for taking their brand national. Now Cromer’s Guaranteed Worst In Town is well on its way to becoming Guaranteed Worst Worldwide!
QuestionMarketing® gets Registered!
“You can’t know where you are going until you know where you have been.”
Cliché, yes. But true.
We’ve always been proud of our exploratory process at Freebairn and Company. Developing effective campaigns and creative concepts depends upon a thorough understanding of not only a client’s business, but also the target market, industry relationships, brand perception and methods of doing business.
This is where QuestionMarketing fits in.
In a time when everyone seems to have all the answers, we help you succeed by asking all the right questions. We pepper you with tough questions about your company, your market, your competition and your aspirations. The answers frame a sound marketing strategy. So even a small budget can make a big impact. The right questions lead to answers that frame everything we do: research, planning, budgeting, buying, creating, and evaluating. When the questions are on the mark, everything else will be, too.
– Freebairn.com
QuestionMarketing
Ready to put it to work for your business? Let us know.
Freebairn gets free rein to build a great website
These days, a huge percentage of retail and B-to-B shoppers start their search on the Internet. So an inviting website is, almost literally, money in the bank.
At Freebairn, we’re ecstatic when a client says, “Do whatever it takes to revamp our website and make it sing.” That’s sort of the marching orders we received recently from Chamberlin Edmonds.
The services Chamberlin Edmonds offers to hospitals aren’t things you instantly understand and order onsite. So the project was challenging. We were like toymakers in Santa’s workshop. A dozen of us were involved in building a totally new website, chock full of best practices to enhance the newcomer’s browsing experience.
The team’s set goals:
- Include information regarding new Chamberlin Edmonds services.
- Give the entire site a clean “look and feel” with easy navigation.
- Use fresh, original photography taken at client hospitals.
- Simplify the company’s offerings with a “Quick Tour.”
- Include access to company social media components.
- Wherever visitors go, prominently display the key call to action, a “Free Assessment” button.
The result, we think, is textbook e-marketing. Check out chamberlinedmonds.com and see if you agree.
“Purity for Life”
2010 Norit Americas Campaign, “Purity for life.”
Clean. Stunning. Beautiful. All the ingredients of a campaign with ‘stopping power.’
Art director, Jay Hatfield and copywriter, Jay Tillinghast developed this deliciously simple, elegant campaign for showcasing Norit Americas’ dedication to the manufacturing of activated carbon and servicing its use to clean the air, water, food and other elements necessary for life.
“Purity for life.” – That pretty much says it all.
Look for more Norit cleanliness online with campaign web banners, too.
Look of the Leader
Freebairn and Company Launches New Mana Website
MANA is the North American arm of the world’s largest manufacturer of post-patent crop protection products. It’s a big player. In fact, MANA’s parent company, Makhteshim Agan, ranks seventh among all multinational agrochemical companies, a list which includes Bayer, Dupont, Syngenta, BASF, Dow and Monsanto. And now, thanks to the design and development work of Freebairn’s Christian Griffith and Kit Becker, this dominant industry force looks, reads and sounds like the global leader it is with a web site worthy of the MANA name.
- 4 brand messages (rotation based on visit) for the home page
- Improved, intuitive site navigation
- Standardized template design for product content
- On-the-fly filtering of MANA products by crop type
- Attention to SEO and SEM flexibility
- Addition of new products and product labels on the product pages
- Addition of general crop imagery on the product page associated with the individual MANA product
- Improved utilization of the labels (either store ourselves or embed from
- AJAX-styled rich media components
and much more…
Check out the new site at http://manainc.com
A Mana Photo Finish
MANA, wrapped up this year’s Cotton Consultants Meeting in Memphis with a big finish.
MANA managers, Dave Downing, John Guion and James Whitehead, employed a special way of saying thank you to their guest consultants and university agricultural extension speakers by presenting them with StealthCam® digital cameras. These high resolution color still image and video recorders feature motion sensors and night vision capability, making them ideal for scouting game, security or around-the-clock nature photography.
Thanks to the customized package design of art director, Jay Hatfield, and the fulfillment efforts of production manager, Dawn Adams, this was one souvenir that definitely captured the moment.
We’re a Favorite Place on Google
Click to see a PDF copy of the Google letter
So, yea – we’re proud.
Throughout 2009, utilizing online brand management best practices, Freebairn and Company made a strong effort to position our full-service advertising agency in the metro Atlanta area. We believe that communication is changing, and while its great to share these visions with clients, it doesn’t hold much water if we aren’t participating in this change and doing it ourselves.
This is us. Doing it ourselves.
Excerpt:
“Congratulations! You’re a Favorite Place on Google. Netween July 1 and September 30, Google users found your Freebairn and Company, Atlanta Advertising Agency business listing 10,061 times, and requested driving directions or other information about your business 488 times…”
Even Farmers Tweet
And you thought Farmers didn’t care about the Internet.
Actually, quite the contrary.
Farmers have been coming online in droves for information from product research to peer communication in forums and chat rooms. With the explosion of rural broadband, and continued plans for future expansion, agricultural companies are finding new and effective ways to communicate with potential and existing customers.
Freebairn client, Mana is no exception
Mana account executive, Kim Maloney along with Freebairn art director, Jay Hatfield worked together to develop the branded Mana Crop Protection Twitter site designed to help Mana communicate with customers, media and the crop protection industry as a whole.
Check ‘em out at: http://twitter.com/manainc
Freebairn launches new Clarity campaign
Assignment: Help client penetrate additional markets via a new web site, corporate identity and collateral materials
When Freebairn initially began working with MD&E, a data consulting and analysis firm, the first order of business was defining the benefits the company offered its customers. Until this time, MD&E’s special area of expertise was within the telecom industry. Our QuestionMarketing® research conducted with MD&E’s staff and its customers led to two conclusions. One, the MD&E track record of success had been built in CRM (customer relationship management). And two, a complete branding effort was called for.
MD&E’s principal assets were twofold: Their strength in accurately identifying problems created by incompatible systems or software. And, their proven ability to clear up all the confusion by providing the most effective and efficient solutions.
Since Freebairn was charged with helping to introduce their services to an expanded marketing base, a new subsidiary name, Clarity, was chosen. It’s a natural for a player which intends to quickly establish its presence in broader arenas, including healthcare, government, and more.
TV Spot: What Makes MANA Make Sense?
Freebairn and Company wrote and produced a MANA television commercial to underscore why ‘MANA Makes Sense’ as the North American farmers’ most cost-effective resource for quality crop protection products.
The schedule is a combination of sponsorships of agriculture news programs including AgDay, U.S. Farm Report and This Week in Agriculture; along with rotating spots and news sponsorships on RFD-TV network. These rotating spots will run within Successful Farming’s Machinery Show and near popular farm news programs.
The total schedule is over 475 spots creating several million (30+) opportunities for “Insist on It” to be seen. And that’s in addition to almost 20 million print and online impressions.
