Leeds-based creative marketing agency Brass, is celebrating £200k of business following a trio of new account wins all hailing from Yorkshire.

In the past few months, the agency has added First Bus York, Dowsing & Reynolds, a high-end homeware brand and Tunstall Healthcare, a leading provider of connected care and health technology solutions to enable independent living, to its growing client base.

Lucy Baird, Head of PR, said: “We’re delighted with the latest spate of account wins at Brass and best of all, they’re all based in Yorkshire, highlighting our unrivalled reputation in the region for creative, integrated PR campaigns.”

First Bus and Brass have had a working relationship that has spanned over 10 years. The most recent brief to land is for York Park & Ride, engaging Brass to launch its highly anticipated fleet of 21 new electric buses in the city following a competitive pitching process. The project will see Brass deliver a highly targeted regional communications plan that aims to drive awareness and excite new and current users of York Park & Ride.

Online design-led interiors brand Dowsing & Reynolds, is opening its first store in Leeds Victoria Quarter this month. Brass will be managing the launch strategy which includes PR, event management and paid media.

Whitely Bridge based Tunstall Healthcare has pioneered the use of technology for over 60 years to support those requiring care and health intervention, to live independently in their chosen home setting. As the newly appointed retained PR agency, Brass will help raise awareness of Tunstall across a diverse audience and help educate on the organisation’s products and services.

Kevin Anderson, Marketing Director at Tunstall Healthcare, said: “The pitch presented by Brass really excited us, they delivered exceptionally against the brief and the team’s expertise really shone through. We’ve been impressed from the word go as the PR team tirelessly deliver results that are transforming our overall marketing approach.”

The post Brass wins trio of accounts appeared first on IPM Bitesize.

Leeds-based full-service agency, Brass is celebrating after taking home five awards at the prestigious 2019 Institute of Promotional Marketing (IPM) Awards held at The Hilton on Park Lane.

The national awards recognise the most effective, insightful and creative campaigns from the world of promotional marketing and brand activation.

The agency’s Kid Kafé campaign for stain-proof fabric manufacturer Aquaclean won Gold in two categories: Household, Health, Beauty & Fashion and Social Media, Digital or Direct Marketing Activation. The campaign saw Brass open the UK’s first café ran entirely by (accident prone) kids who put the Aquaclean technology through its paces serving cakes and juices to customers and influencers alike. The one day event created content for multi-channel use that drove a 24% increase in sales YOY. Judges said of the campaign “Outstanding results achieved from a charming and originally ideal based on great insights.”

The Cycle Project campaign for malt loaf family favourite Soreen won Bronze in three categories: On, in or with Pack Activation, Trail, Acquisition and Insight, Strategy. The summer 2018 on-pack promotion for Soreen supported its Tour de Yorkshire partnership and squidgy energy proposition.  It encouraged families to get into cycling by giving away cycling vouchers every day in partnership with Halfords.

This year’s crop of awards make it five years in a row that Brass has won Gold at the IPM Awards across a variety of categories including Best Shopper Marketing Campaign.

You can read more about the Aquaclean campaign on the Brass website: https://www.brassagency.com/our-work/aquaclean-kid-kafe/

The post Brass cleans up with five award wins appeared first on IPM Bitesize.

We are seeing a resurgence of on-pack offers, says Paul McGann of marketing agency Brass

From movie downloads to cuddly toys, family holidays to festivals, it seems to me more and more packs have added a ‘Win’, ‘FREE’ or ‘Collect’ message on them. It’s about time!

For years, many food and drink brands have been in a race to the bottom, repeatedly slashing prices to justify a space on shelf and generate any sales growth at all. It wasn’t sustainable and it is increasingly ineffective. In some FMCG categories, over 75% of volume is now sold at a discounted price and shoppers are being trained to only buy when there’s a deal.

Meeting demand for ever lower price points against rising ingredient and production costs means something has to give, and in many cases it’s food quality, or marketing, or both. In doing so, brands sign their own death warrant and fall victims of Project Reset or the latest retailer range rationalisation. Who needs a brand when some own label is perceived to be lower price and better taste?

I think it’s time for brands to fight back. Add value, don’t erode it. Justify your superiority and price premium in the category. Your packaging is one area of shopper marketing activation you can actually control consistently. It is your best salesperson.

Brands can leverage this direct-to-shopper channel with promotional propositions on-pack that really help them stand out in a sea of sameness. Deliver messaging beyond the functional that engages and excites shoppers browsing the fixture. The best on-pack activations mean we throw rational thinking out of the trolley in a desperate attempt to ‘win a Disneyland holiday’ or ‘get tickets to that exclusive gig’.

And they grow sales. Well executed, you can expect sales uplifts in excess of 20%.

In fact on-pack activity can deliver a number of your marketing and sales objectives cost effectively. They help you reinvigorate tired impulse brands. For under a penny a pack, you can attract new buyers and grow household penetration. Build purchase frequency and rate of sale. Secure extra display. Encourage cross sell. Even reward loyalty. They are the perfect communication platform to build a deeper conversation with your shoppers and consumers.

Of course there are plenty of on-pack campaigns that miss the mark. Shoppers are savvy these days and wary of activations offering just a few top prizes with a one in a million chance of winning! Similarly, technology for technology’s sake can sometimes get in the way of a great promotion – be sure your audience will bother to download the App to enter using that clever Augmented Reality experience you spent most of the budget on.

If you are thinking about going on-pack in 2019, here are some things to think about:

1.     Theme – use shopper insight to find the most motivating promotional messages

2.     Awareness – consider the path to purchase, how will a shopper see the activity?

3.     Stand-out, not standard – be creative with the on-pack design to maximise impact

4.     User Experience – make the entry mechanic simple and appealing for the target audience

5.     Reward the many, not the few – think how you can add value for as many shoppers as possible

6.     Amplify – use all your brand channels to bring the activation to life

With many of the big retailers and brands back in growth, I sense optimism slowly returning to the UK grocery market. I hope this observation inspires you to give on-pack activations a go in 2019 and I look forward to seeing you ‘on shelf!’

Paul McGann is Managing Partner at Brass Agency. Brass is a multi-award-winning full-service marketing agency with expertise in strategic thinking and delivery and specialist skills in digital, advertising, design, PR, SEO, media, shopper, consumer insights, brand engagement and promotional marketing. Clients include Coty, Lucozade Ribena Suntory, Perrigo and Burton’s Biscuits. This comment originally appeared on the Brass website.

The post Pack-a-Punch appeared first on IPM Bitesize.

Lucozade and TBK Group collected the trophies for Brand Owner of the Year, Agency of the Year and the coveted Grand Prix Award at The IPM Awards 2018 last night, the biggest networking event of the promotional marketing industry year.

This year’s winners, which were announced at the IPM’s black-tie Awards Gala on Thursday 14th June at the London Hilton Park Lane, showcased and celebrated the very best in creativity and effectiveness in the promotional marketing industry.

The evening commenced with opening addresses from Lord Black of Brentwood, President of the IPM, and John Sylvester, the IPM’s Chairman and Chairman of Sodexo Benefits & Reward Services UK, while the host for the event was comedy superstar, Russell Kane.

Lucozade was named as Brand Owner of the Year, after campaigns for sub-brands Lucozade Sport, Lucozade Energy and Lucozade Zero collected five Gold awards, three Silvers and the Grand Prix (for Lucozade Energy’s ‘Unstoppable Bottle’ campaign).

The Grand Prix is chosen from all of the Gold winners in the IPM Awards 2018 by a Final Judging Panel. The winner is selected by anonymous vote, and this year the vote went to the ‘Unstoppable Bottle’ campaign.

All of the Lucozade trophies were for campaigns created by agency TBK Group, which also took two more Silver trophies for the ‘£10 million Giveaway for Carphone Warehouse – this haul cemented the title of Agency of the Year 2018.

Other agencies taking away multiple trophies from the IPM Awards 2018 include Savvy Marketing (five Golds and three Bronzes), ZEAL Creative (five Golds, two Silvers and four Bronzes), Leith Links (three Golds and two Silvers) and Brass (two Golds and a Bronze).

The full list of winners is on the IPM website, and you can click here to download the Winners’ Book for the IPM Awards 2018.

The post Lucozade and TBK Group sparkle at IPM Awards 2018 Gala Dinner appeared first on IPM Bitesize.

Agile start-ups are subverting the grocery aisles – older brands must learn their tricks to stay ahead of them, says Sam Bannister of Brass Agency

You only have to explore a few aisles of a supermarket to see that we’re in a golden age for ‘challenger brands’ – the fast-moving, agile start-up brands that are changing the norms of grocery shopping. From Fever Tree in drinks, passing by Propercorn in snacking, Freaks of Nature in chilled and Halo Top in frozen.

Even the trip to the supermarket itself is being challenged, if we think about brands like HelloFresh and Gousto.

But how is this possible? How can these young companies, often crowd-funded and with limited budget, take on the might of established FMCG companies? We believe three factors play a key role in this disruption:

An intuitive sense of consumer needs and trends.

These new challenger brands are often created in response to a specific gap in the market and, as such, often exploit a new and burgeoning demand from consumers. Be that healthy, local, artisan, or free from, they find a void and fill it quickly, benefiting from being first to market. Part of the joy of shopping is discovering a new brand that better meets your needs. Sainsbury’s are playing back this sentiment with news that more help will be given to help incubate start-ups, including listings, mentoring, free Nectar data, and even equity for exclusivity.

The ability to be agile.

Not constrained by large estates, legacy systems and (dare we say it) bureaucracy, challenger brands have the ability to be much more flexible and entrepreneurial in the way they operate. Whether this is product innovation or packaging design, they implement change in a fraction of the time that a more established brand may be able to.

A mastery of marketing direct to consumer.

Quick to embrace digital-first, challengers are often bold and creative in their marketing. Not afraid to experiment with guerrilla tactics and social media channels to shout about how well they understand consumers and, in turn, build a strong connection.

So that’s it, then? If your brand has been around a while, it’s doomed? Well, we’d argue that this is very much not the case. All of this artisanal craftsmanship and soy-replacement has to be balanced out with something else, right? Heritage brands possess attributes that don’t come easily to challenger brands:

Familiarity

Status to a large audience – heritage brands often have latent awareness, and media spend may be more effectively deployed to reach a mass audience

Inherited affinity

Whether it is inherited from parents or siblings, or recommended by friends and colleagues, heritage brands that consumers ‘grow up’ with are very often adopted into their adult households

Emotional attachment

It might be the jingle. Maybe it’s the smell. It might even just be that you’ve seen the brand on almost every single trip to a supermarket. Heritage brands have the ability to stir powerful consumer emotion through nostalgia.

The goodwill of heritage itself

Being around for a long time can carry weight. It suggests a brand has stood the test of time, consistently delivering quality and consistency… an elevated status. This can be very powerful if used correctly, particularly in categories where purchase frequency is low.

So what does this mean for heritage brands?

In short, there isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ solution for a heritage brand to remain contemporary and relevant. But it’s imperative that they are dynamic in their marketing, and here are some pointers for thought:

• Don’t disregard what your brand has done well for so long; but at the same time learn from what the challengers are doing well
• Place the consumer at the heart of your brand. Gain insight from them, and use it to your advantage
• Understand not just current trends in the marketplace, but also what the future might look like – where next?
• Innovate, innovate, innovate. In product, flavour, packaging and marketing.
• Reflect the excitement that consumers have been trained to expect, but do it in your own way
• Be bold, and challenge the norms. In outward communication with consumer, but also through internal practices
• Innovate some more!

Sam Bannister is Head of Insight at Brass Agency. Brass is a multi-award-winning full-service marketing agency with expertise in strategic thinking and delivery and specialist skills in digital, advertising, design, PR, SEO, media, shopper, consumer insights and promotional marketing. Clients include Coty, Lucozade Ribena Suntory, Perrigo and Burton’s Biscuits. This comment originally appeared on Brass’ website.

The post Heritage Brands: Staying Relevant Amongst the Cool New Challengers appeared first on IPM Bitesize.

Brass, the Leeds-based integrated marketing agency, has expanded its insight offering with the appointment of Sam Bannister to the newly created role of Head of Insight.

The introduction of the new position marks an increased investment by Brass into insight, strengthening its offer to existing clients such as First Direct, Kellogg’s, Hammonds, CITB and Lucozade.

Bannister spent an earlier part of his career at Brass, as a Senior Researcher. A position at RDSi followed, where he was responsible for a number of FMCG, shopper, and financial services accounts, before his return to Brass.

In his new position at Brass, Bannister will be establishing the role and benefits of insight within the broader agency offering, and is already beginning to implement his experiences.

Managing Partner, Paul McGann, says: “All businesses face greater uncertainty during the Brexit transition and our clients need innovative research and insight more than ever.  Whether it is launching new FMCG products, devising an advertising campaign or creating a better user experience, Sam brings a wealth of knowledge to help optimise the opportunity and drive ROI. Watch this space for some exiting developments in the world of research!”

Sam Bannister adds: “We want to be able to do something different to what’s currently in the marketplace – a more progressive approach to insight – and Brass offers a fantastic opportunity to do this. We’ve been listening to the needs of clients, and strongly believe we can combine research expertise with the talented Brass creative and digital resource to build an agile and distinct insight proposition”

The picture shows Sam Bannister (l) and Paul McGann (r).

Brass is a full-service integrated marketing agency with specialist skills in advertising, design, PR, SEO, media, shopper and promotional marketing. Clients include ASDA, Lucozade, Kellogg’s, Haribo, Burton’s Foods, New Look and Jet2.

The post Brass develops insight offering with new hire appeared first on IPM Bitesize.

Burton’s Biscuit Company has launched its biggest ever promotional marketing campaign for its Fish ‘n’ Chips savoury snack brand, with an on-pack prize promotion with a £1m prize fund.

The ‘Join Our Fans’ campaign, created by Brass Shopper, part of Leeds-based full-service, communications agency Brass, will run for 12 weeks and is being supported by social content, outdoor advertising, in-store activation and PR.

‘Join Our Fans’ offers shoppers the chance to win one of 20,000 £50 Ticketmaster Gift Cards to spend on the event or activity or their choice.  Entry is via codes found on promotional packs. Shoppers will also be entered into a draw to win one of three ultimate fan experiences, where the winners will get to create and tailor their own perfect fan experience prize up to the value of £2,500.

The campaign went live in April and will be on shelves until the end June 2017.

Paul McGann, Managing Partner at Brass, says: “In a hugely competitive category, ‘Join Our Fans’ has huge standout; building on the brand’s quirky tone of voice and loyal following, adding value and engaging a wider range of shoppers.”

In addition to creating and delivering the on-pack promotion, Brass also created and executed all key campaign elements including the supporting campaign microsite, www.joinourfans.com, where shoppers can enter the promotion and upload their own fan stories.  Brass will also be managing the social creative content for the 12-week campaign period.

Sital Parmar, Senior Marketing Manager at Burtons Biscuit Company, comments: “These are exciting times for the Fish ‘n’ Chips brand as we look to continue to build on the phenomenal growth we’ve seen since our re-introduction in 2014. We’re confident ‘Join our Fans’ will drive rate of sale for retailers, reward our existing fans and drive household penetration.”

Burton’s Biscuit Company is a leading branded and own-label supplier of quality biscuits and snacks and one of the largest biscuit suppliers in the UK.  It owns and bakes market-leading brands such as Maryland Cookies, Jammie Dodgers, Wagon Wheels and Fish ‘n’ Chips.

Brass Shopper is part of Brass, a full-service, communications agency based in Leeds with clients including ASDA, Kellogg’s, Ribena, Costcutter and Aunt Bessie’s.

The post Burton’s Fish ‘n’ Chips runs £1m ‘Join Our Fans’ push appeared first on IPM Bitesize.

Leeds-based agency Brass Shopper expanded its client service team following a number of new client wins, including Quorn, Costcutter Supermarkets Group, Soreen and JTF.com.

Brass Shopper team, part of the £13m turnover Brass group, has also launched a new brand identity and a dedicated website www.brass-shopper.com to showcase its approach, recent campaigns and the breadth of instore and online services now offered.

These range from on pack promotions to experiential campaigns, point of sale to online advertising and are complemented by a comprehensive retail media planning and buying team.

The latest recruit to the expanding Brass Shopper team is Ellie Staveley, who joins to work on multi-channel campaign delivery for Kellogg’s, Kinder Surprise, JTF.com and Superbreak. Meanwhile, Lawrence McNally has been promoted to shopper account manager.

Paul McGann, managing partner of Brass, says: “These are exciting times for shopper marketing at Brass as technology unlocks on-the-go marketing and more brands shift spend towards the point of purchase.  We have the extensive in house resources required to create multi-channel shopper campaigns that have impact and give more immediate return on investment.”

Brass is a full-service, communications agency with a client list which includes FMCG and retail brands such as ASDA, Quorn, Kellogg’s, Ribena, Kinder Surprise, Slumberdown, Mission Foods and Superbreak.

The post Brass Shopper adds to client team appeared first on IPM Bitesize.

Leeds Rhinos Foundation, the charity set up by rugby league club Leeds Rhinos, has launched a film that showcases the work going on under the foundation’s ‘Changing Lives Through Sport’ philosophy.

The film, created by Leeds-based agency, Brass, stars Leeds Rhinos player and Foundation trustee Jamie Jones-Buchanan. It captures how the lives of children and adults in deprived communities across Leeds have been enriched through sport.

Shot at four different locations across the city, to reflect the Charity’s wide variety of work, the 136 second film shows the Foundation inspiring young people in local schools as well as working with Specialist Inclusive Learning Centres and TryZone Education Centre to improve the lives of adult learners and those with disabilities.

Dr. Neil Kaiper-Holmes, chairman of the Leeds Rhinos Foundation board of trustees, says: “It has been a long held ambition to have a top quality product that vividly describes what the Foundation is all about. But the costs of production have always been prohibitive for a relatively small charity such as ours, with a turnover of less than a million pounds a year. Thanks to the generosity of in-kind sponsors Brass and Mob Sport, we now have a vehicle to enable us to attract and inform even more sponsors and donors.”

Following an exclusive premier of the film on Wednesday 21st October at an event to celebrate the Foundation’s tenth anniversary, the charity’s strategy to connect emotionally to a new audience continues through adverts, exhibition banners, social media assets, photography kits and a video pack. All this has been created by Brass to help the Foundation raise awareness of its achievements and attract new sponsors.

Since being founded in 2005, the award-winning charity now works with an estimated 50,000 people a year under its five focus pillars of Education, Health, Sport, Art and Heritage.

Brass is a full-service, communications agency which offers digital, research, advertising, design, PR, SEO, media, shopper and promotional marketing to a range of local and national clients. In June, the agency won an IPM Gold Award for its work on the digital element of Lucozade Ribena Suntory’s Lucozade Sports Conditions Zone campaign for the isotonic sports drink.

The post Brass creates Leeds Rhinos Foundation film appeared first on IPM Bitesize.