Did you know that sriracha is a style of hot sauce, not a brand of sauce? Just like ketchup, sriracha can be manufactured by anyone. However, in the U.S. at least, when someone says sriracha (or rooster sauce for that matter), they’re talking about Huy Fong Food’s spicy elixir with the iconic green cap and rooster logo. (more…)
Over the course of our 11 years as the food marketing agency, we’ve met some wonderful people and read some amazing food, beverage, and ingredient industry research. Those people and that expertise are what motivate us to keep pushing and growing as an agency. But it’s the people we haven’t met and the things we’ve read that you couldn’t research if you tried that keep us sane and get us over the end-of-Friday-hump! In that spirit, as part of our two-month-long blog celebration of “the ones,” here are 11 of our all-time favorite spam comments left on this blog, curated and presented for your weekend reading enjoyment. (more…)
Now in our 11th year of food, beverage, and ingredients marketing, we’re taking time to “celebrate the ones“: the moments, meals, projects, employees, clients, friends, and all the other people, places, and things that have made us who we are. To get things started, we present a list of 11 relatively awkward (yet fond and important) memories from the early years of MarketPlace with Phil, Tracy, Josh, and Leslie: (more…)
When’s the last time you clicked on a banner ad? Or felt anything but annoyed by one?
After years of increasingly aggressive banners – flashing, expanding, even sneaking onscreen – we’ve started to train ourselves, when not actively despising them, to ignore them. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be worth the investment.
So why bother with banners? Because what’s wrong with them isn’t their format; it’s how the content is used. You’ve seen all the gimmicks – rollovers, pop-ups, video, mini-games – but none of that stuff can turn bad content good. However, if you use the space wisely and create a message backed by sound strategy and design, a banner can be just as useful as any other marketing tool.
Take our client International Dehydrated Foods (IDF). They sought our help promoting their new high-protein chicken concentrate, and many of the channels we were to use features the sorts of banner ads you’d expect: glamour shots of well-plated meals, extreme close-ups of succulent fruits and veggies, and happy stock photo people enjoying food together on an immaculate lawn, beach, or clearing in a crop-field. Rather than add to the forgettable-banner morass, MarketPlace suggested a different approach. We came up with a bold strategy: directly challenge the dominance of whey, the market leader in protein, with a direct message and a design made memorable by its high aesthetic. The one-two punch of strategy and creative put IDF a step above the other banner ads on the site and helped garner the attention – and spark the questions – they wanted their customers asking.
Want to learn more about how strategy and creative can make any marketing tool more effective for your business? Give us a shout!
This time last year, we began discussing our 10th year as a company. Over the span of a month, we’d regularly talk about our history, clients over the years, and the friends we’ve made and the good work we’ve done. Inevitably, our conversations would turn into reminiscing and storytelling, and we’d say things like, “Remember that one project . . . ?” and “Remember that one day . . . ?” and “What about that one time . . . ?”
And it hit us: we weren’t celebrating “MarketPlace” in general; we were celebrating the “ones”: that “one” project, that “one” day, that “one” time with that employee or that “one” client.
In that spirit, we decided that waiting for this year, year 11 (literally the 1s), would be more meaningful than celebrating our 10th year. So that’s what we’re doing.
Over the course of April and May, we’ll be celebrating all those ones: moments, meals, projects, employees, clients, friends, etc. From highlighting 11 client moments to creating an 11-layer dip to staging an 11-lap race to posting the 11 most embarrassing photos in MarketPlace history, we’ll be documenting that celebration on our website and our Facebook page, and we hope you’ll check in and be part of it, because if you’re reading this, you’re one of the “ones” we’re celebrating, one of the ones who’s made us who we are today.
When the first social media platforms started popping up – Twitter, facebook, Instagram – people didn’t know what to use them for. “Do I really need to share my every waking thought in 140-character increments? Do my friends really need to see an artfully arranged photo of every meal I eat?” 
The answer, of course, is yes, yes, a thousand times yes. But, what started as a tool for sharing personal experience began to take on new life as businesses, rather than individuals, started joining. Suddenly, businesses had a new channel, one that connected them directly to consumers. As companies figured out the rules of this new media and began to find successes in speaking to consumers, the question shifted: could these same social channels be used by businesses to communicate with other businesses? (more…)
Of all the exciting things that happen at MarketPlace on a regular basis, one of my favorites is when we kick off new partnerships. One of our most recent partners is IDF (International Dehydrated Foods), a global leader in the design and
production of poultry, meat, and broth ingredients. We recently began work with IDF on developing their brand story, which is amazing and has so much potential to say and do big things in the industry. (more…)
Food is our primary passion at MarketPlace, of course, but it’s definitely not the start and end of our interests. Take pets, for instance. Whether they’re our own or others’, we love pets. MarketPlace is a second home to Silky Landau, and we generally play host to a number of other employee pets on any given day. Many of our team work with animals in their own time: Nicole volunteers with pet organizations, Crystal photographs dogs professionally, I stubbornly argue for felines in the cats vs. dogs debate, etc. And, of course, we love helping pet companies with their marketing challenges, as much of our food knowledge clicks naturally with pet nutrition and care. Lately, though, we’ve wanted to do even more to help out our animal companions. (more…)
2013 has me very excited. Not even three weeks in, and we’re sprinting! We’re establishing great new relationships, working on inspiring projects, looking to add several positions to extend our internal capability, and making a ton of headway on the full release of our new brand identity. In no way do I want to stifle that momentum . . . but I’m going to take a brief moment to reflect on the 2012 holiday before time eludes us. (more…)
On Tuesday, January 15, Facebook introduced its latest update, Graph Search. As this new functionality is rolled out, users will be able to search – and be found – in new ways.
