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The Richards Group Launches 1st TV Campaign for Dave’s Killer Bread | Cult Mascot Comes to Life

AdChat DFW Posted On October 13, 2021

The Richards Group recently produced three special effect-driven spots for the cult favorite Dave’s Killer Bread. The spots animate the tough-guy, hair-flowing-guitar-strumming mascot on the bread package encouraging grocery shoppers to choose the bread. In addition, the campaign includes unique OOH billboards and murals that position the brand’s character with guitars and amplifiers, complimenting the campaigns tagline, “Bread, amplified.”

Julia Melle, Creative Group Head at Richards, told AdChat DFW, “We won the Flowers Foods (Nature’s Own, Wonder and Tastykake) business in 2018. This trusted relationship we built with our clients helped us earn the Dave’s Killer Bread business in August of 2020.

“Dave’s has never done TV before. There has been some social, digital and OOH in limited markets. Despite being the organic category leader, with nationwide distribution, few people were able to name Dave’s. So, we needed to officially introduce Dave’s Killer Bread to people and catapult the brand into a beloved household name nationwide. That said, we are taking steps before launching nationally so our focus is in the Northeast and California for this launch.

“Dave’s Killer Bread is all about breaking the rules for good. They don’t stop until they get to great – even if it bucks the norm. Which is why every one of their products is hearty; flavorful; non-GMO; and full of protein, fiber, and whole grains. The brand never wants to fall among the boring organic breads – they are committed to delivering killer taste and nutrition. Rooted in purpose, Dave’s Killer Bread also breaks the rules of societal norms by championing Second Chance Employment of people with criminal backgrounds and educates other companies on these hiring principles. So our job was to help the brand become a household name and help health-conscious consumers understand they don’t have to choose a boring organic bread — they can choose Dave’s and have it all – nutrition, taste and rebel-with-a-conscience attitude they respect. “

Ron Henderson, Group Creative Head at Richards, added, “Dave’s Killer Bread is one of those brands that the creative folks (and the whole team for that matter) can’t wait to get their hands on. It’s a superior product with the best name in the bread aisle, a marvelously quirky logo, a client with a history of breaking the rules, and a need to build awareness.

“I have to say, the moment I saw that logo it was love at first sight. It was bold and beautiful and wonderfully weird – the perfect complement to such a premium product (kind of like wrapping an Omega watch in R. Crumb gift wrap.)

“Typically, the client would be asking the agency to make a bigger deal out of the logo. In this case, however, we were begging them to make the guitar-wielding Dave logo the front man for the new campaign. We wanted to make some noise in the bread aisle, so we set about plugging in Dave’s electric guitar to let the world know this isn’t just bread – it’s bread, amplified.

“On billboards, we created long cables that connect the logo’s guitar to 10-foot-tall amps. For TV and digital videos, Shindig (the music production company we used), found one of the country’s top guitarists to perform the guitar solos, then we had The Mill in L.A. animate the logo to the tracks. To add an extra touch of authenticity to the guitar playing, we recorded video of our studio guitarist during the recording sessions so The Mill could match the animation to the real hand and finger positions. Even though The Mill is one of the premiere VFX houses on the planet, we never wanted the animation to look too slick but instead stay true to the rather simple illustrated Dave’s Killer Bread logo. Occasionally, we had them give Dave some subtle “guitar face” moments during the solo, but we tried not to take too many liberties with the original design and physical quality of the logo.

“The recordings were done at The Village in L.A. The live-action scenes were directed by Harold Einstein of Dummy Films, a seasoned comedy director known for his work on Geico, Little Caesar’s and a long list of memorable campaigns. Harold was also very instrumental in developing the overall approach and shooting style for the TV spots, which kept the focus on our guitar-playing logo, never getting upstaged by double-takes or cutaways. The food photography was done by director Tom Ryan of Lucky 21.

“Editing and other additional post-production was handled by charlieuniformtango of Dallas and Sean Lagrange, editor at Arcade.”

Dave’s Killer Bread based in Milwaukie, Oregon, was founded in 2005 by Dave Dahl, a former meth addict and convict, who learned the baking trade growing up in his family bakery. After 15 years in prison, a rehabilitated Dahl returned to his family business, with the desire to make the bakery the best it could be.

He perfected what he called the best loaf of bread and named it Dave’s Killer Bread, marketing it to the local farmers markets, and the brand took off from there. Dave’s Killer Bread specializes in making bread with seeds and whole grains, including spelt and sprouted wheat free of animal products and chemical additives. The company has steadily grown, expanding from 30 employees to more than 300 by 2012 and the story has been covered by many media outlets. In 2015, Dave’s Killer Bread was purchased by Flower Foods for $275 million, with Dahl reportedly receiving $33 million in the sales. 

CREDITS:

Creatives
CEO: Glenn Dady
CCO: Sue Batterton
Group Creative Directors: Terence Reynolds and Julia Melle
Writer: Ron Henderson
Art Directors: Mike Latour and Tim Eger

Brand Management
Principal: Dale Hruby
Group Account Director: Jennifer Prieto
Supervisor: Alina Garcia

Brand Planning
Strategy Director: Kelly Piland
Strategy Director: Anna Scott Phillips
Sr. Strategist: Kelsey Damon

Production
Broadcast Producer: Jenny Wolk
Print Producer: Karen Newman

Production Company
Dummy Films
Director: Harold Einstein

Edit
Arcade Edit
Charlie Uniform Tango

VFX/Animation
The Mill

Music
Shindig

Advertising

Need Employee Retention? Mindhandle’s Eric Harris Provides 4 Ways to Align Mission, Vision and Values

MindHandle Posted On October 8, 2021

If you’re in business, and your business is powered by people, you’re in the business of people. A company’s relationships with its employees should supersede any other, and its actions should support that belief.

Retention is as Important Today as Ever in the War for Talent

Though most HR leaders would agree, there is always a force at work against employee engagement, regardless of the economic conditions. Naysayers will find a way to create headwinds against company values, and their actions will inevitably erode retention. Today, they’ll blame the great resignation (or throw up their hands in defeat). In 2019, they’d point to the lowest unemployment numbers on record. Years before that, the rise of the gig economy.

Still, retention remains a goal for HR, especially in the age of the empowered employee. While the options have increased significantly for talent, so have the costs to replace it. Gallagher & Co reported that replacing an employee could cost 30% of her salary.

Proportionally speaking, as organizations are raising salaries to encourage employees to stay, that 30% represents an increasingly larger number.

Retention Takes More Than Perks

Most retention efforts readily available to HR leaders are designed to keep people performing in place. After all, “retain” technically means “to keep,” or in this economy, “to not lose.” These efforts might include any number of benefits packages designed by people outside the company and implemented to offer a suite of perks. Retirement plans, gym memberships, health and wellness programs, and even on-site baristas, kegs and foosball tables fall into this category. Do these retention efforts work? There’s no single, uniform answer to that question. “Will this retention effort work for my company?” is the question HR should ask instead.

In this economy, attraction, adoption and championship among customers and employees are critical to keeping a business alive…

If an organization’s only desire is to convince people to stay, it should look no further than these common tactics. But that’s a symptom of treating employees like Ikea thinks about shoppers: Creating an environment that’s aesthetically interesting, but intentionally confusing, with the hopes that people linger longer, meandering and spending more.

Enlightened businesses, on the other hand, understand their employees have a choice. They don’t build an experience where people meander and linger. In these successful businesses, employees perform to greater heights and take pride in their work. They create careers, not only staying for a long time, but delivering exponentially more value as they grow vertically and horizontally through the organization.

Retention Requires Alignment with Vision, Mission & Values

According to ManpowerGroup, one in five employees left their jobs or are planning to do so within the next six months. The reason given for leaving? 59% of workers sought a better fit with their values. That figure is almost double the number of employees seeking increased compensation or career advancement (31%).

Employees passionately seek an employer whose values resonate with theirs. Workers are as “belief-driven” in their connection to an employer brand as loyal consumers demonstrate when they shop. In this economy, attraction, adoption and championship among customers and employees are critical to keeping a business alive, and we can measure how well an organization performs by the degree of its employees’ alignment to the published vision, mission and values.

Never has it been more important for businesses to be who they say they are and to hold themselves accountable, living up to the vision, mission, and values they purport.

Vision, Mission & Values are A Galvanizing Set of Beliefs

These strategic, organizational principles serve as a roadmap, helping a company stay on track and work toward achieving its stated objectives. They guide every business decision, support and inspire employees, and cultivate loyalty among internal and external audiences. These ideals are also the foundation of any strong employment brand. When all stakeholders understand the employer’s vision and mission, and how values can support both, they can leverage this language to lead their organization toward success.

When vision, mission and values aren’t aligned, or are talked but not walked, the disconnect can lead to devastating results. If these statements aren’t reflected in the experiences of the workforce, businesses run the risk of losing talent and experiencing high turnover. A recent study indicated nearly 30% of jobseekers have left a job within the first 90 days of starting (indicating misalignment between the candidate and the employer brand). Never has it been more important for businesses to be who they say they are and to hold themselves accountable, living up to the vision, mission, and values they purport.

Vision, Mission & Values are the Essence of Employment Branding

While there’s no shortcut to defining an organization’s Vision, Mission & Values, communicating this set of beliefs through branded messages can actually seem like a shortcut to retention. When employees are aligned with these beliefs, magical things happen, so success largely depends on the ability to communicate them. Below are four ways enlightened organizations’ internal communications teams are hacking their cultural code to find and share the magic, improving engagement and retention in the process:

1. Retention Begins with Recruitment

When the average company needs staff, it posts an ad that reads “now hiring,” without much strategic discernment around who they seek to hire. The enlightened company, on the other hand, treats recruitment efforts as chapter one in the story of its employees. A brand exists to remind us who we are, and that kind of purpose is often found in our work. The employment brand journey begins at the top of the funnel, so it’s important to create recruiting campaigns that help people identify the best versions of themselves in the hiring messages. This requires HR to activate employment brand messages through talent acquisition efforts, with a concerted focus on moving from the generic “now hiring” to more specific and inviting “Do you identify as someone with these values? If so, you will succeed here.” 

2. Celebrate Values in Action

The average organization treats its daily drumbeat as “the going concern,” sometimes with too little regard for the many victories – however big or small – happening regularly within it. But the companies who win big with people know better. They consider the pulse of the company a journalistic beat, and they highlight the successes and lessons learned on a regular cadence. Brands are built by repetition over time. If a value is important, the company must make a concerted effort to highlight how living in line with it leads to success.

When an organization’s vision, mission, and values serve to steer it in line with business objectives, it elicits increased happiness, compliance, loyalty, and productivity from employees.

3. Leadership is Thought Leadership

An employee will almost always look to her manager for a clear definition of success in her role. That’s why most messages are expected to reach employees through this medium. However, certain higher-level communications must come from leadership, so that management can apply the traction. The company’s strategic direction is one such message. Where are we going? Why? How will we know when we get there? The answers to these questions are leadership’s responsibility to communicate.

As the black box around corporate communications continues to recede, leadership must now embrace the responsibility of not only leading people and showing them the way, but also acting like publishers of content that builds brands. Leaders must become thought leaders, regularly contributing high-level, vision-, mission-, and values-oriented messages to the internal content strategy. This requires thinking outside the common strategy decks, town halls and skip-level meetings and embracing new stages, like videos, internal social content and more.

4. True Brand Champions Never Leave

When an employee exits a company, the team is faced with many decisions. But is rarely the question asked, “What is the communications plan for those affected before, during and after this transition?” Enlightened organizations see offboarding as yet another new chapter in the communications plan, equipping former associates to take on alumni roles, and empowering them to reflect on their experiences. These reflections can often aid in recruitment discussions, answering questions like “What’s possible for me after my time here?” Why should all that pride disappear just because an employee does? Even exits are an opportunity to reinforce values and improve retention.

Vision, Mission & Values Alignment Matters Now

The impact of strong employee engagement is difficult to overstate. When an organization’s vision, mission, and values serve to steer it in line with business objectives, it elicits increased happiness, compliance, loyalty, and productivity from employees. This language combines to form the foundation of a winning strategy, and it demands time and collaborative attention from leaders in HR, marketing and corporate communications.

Advertising

Edgy Streaming Shows Are a Missed Opportunity For Brands | TMA’s Melissa Fallon Tells Us Why

The Marketing Arm Posted On October 7, 2021

By Melissa Fallon, SVP, Entertainment

The Emmy Awards a few weeks back had some notable absences. Due to pandemic-related production and release date delays, several of the most highly regarded shows were not eligible for Emmy nominations this year. Among them are the hit shows Succession, Euphoria, Barry, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The White Lotus, and Insecure from HBO, as well as Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Netflix’s Ozark, Stranger Things, Russian Doll, and Dead to Me. Apple’s The Morning Show was also ineligible this year.

In addition to their pop culture impact and rabid fanbases, something that these shows have in common is they aren’t shackled by any broadcast restrictions, which means they’re more free to dive deep into complex stories and characters. They don’t have to shy away from language, sexuality, and violence. Nor do they need to white-wash narratives to the detriment of fantastic, identity-based storytelling.

Brand marketers are always looking to tap into the cultural zeitgeist to elevate their brand or increase brand affinity. But how do brands walk the line between tapping into some of these fan bases while ensuring they don’t alienate the broader consumer base? Are consumers as sensitive to edgier content as we think? Or are the voices of a few, louder than those of the majority, scaring brands into playing it safer than they need to?

I believe brands can take bigger risks in the quest for increased cultural resonance. Take Ozark, the Netflix show about a family man (Marty Byrd played by Jason Bateman) who gets caught up with a drug cartel. What if Redfin tapped into the excitement around the upcoming final season of Ozark by creating a faux “for sale” posting of the Byrd family home, and hosted a fan experience within a replica of the home? Can’t we trust consumers to understand that Redfin isn’t supporting drugs, murder, and cartels, but contributing to the entertainment value of a fictional TV show?

HBO’s The White Lotus was a standout hit this summer, and sure to be on the awards circuit when eligible. The show features a cast of characters with a variety of personal issues on a luxury vacation at a fictional Hawaiian resort, The White Lotus. The show’s aesthetic is a character in and of itself. Maybe Wayfair could curate a collection of products inspired by the show and create some exclusive items in collaboration with the show’s art director or set designer. Is the show’s risqué subject matter a non-starter for brands even when leaning into the design aesthetic?

Brands need to create cultural moments in order to achieve cultural resonance at a time when consumer sentiment is evolving. It is far more practical and cost effective for brands to tap into storytellers who are already connecting with consumers on a significant emotional level. Brands have been doing this for years, but the “no holds barred” content from streaming services has changed the game. Sure there are some safer bets for brands like Stranger Things or Ted Lasso. These might have some bad language, but are generally brand friendly. Coke notably had a successful partnership for season three of Stranger Things that hit on all cylinders, creating a “life imitates art imitates life” that rewarded fans, and in turn, the brand. But what about all the other programming?

Using social data and insights, brands have an opportunity to better understand their consumer base via the programming, tapping into the deepest reaches of their emotional psyche. This consumer understanding can open up possibilities for brands to align with properties historically dismissed out of hand, and connect on a genuine level. The benefits of partnerships with this kind of programming have the potential to resonate longer than a more traditional marketing campaign. What happens when marketers step out of their comfort zone and ask, “what if?”

Melissa Fallon is an SVP in TMA’s entertainment practice, leading brands in integration, product placement, and partnership with film, TV, and streaming properties.

original content

Advertising

TracyLocke Diversifies Executive Leadership Board to Drive Strategic Growth

AdChat DFW Posted On September 30, 2021

Investments in the expanded structure prioritize data and innovation to fuel creativity for both client partners and employee advancement

Leading commerce and communication agency, TracyLocke, announced its new executive leadership board, spanning across its hub offices in Chicago, Dallas and Wilton, Conn., focused on steering the future of the agency. The announcement comes on the heels of TracyLocke’s announcement naming Tina Manikas as President in June.

“As we established our executive leadership board, we looked for individuals that embodied our culture of innovation and collaboration,” said Michael Lovegrove, Chief Executive Officer. “Each member of our team brings a unique point of view and new perspective to the table, unlocking business opportunities across and for our full client portfolio.”

The newly expanded executive leadership board, under the leadership of Lovegrove and Manikas, will be focused on the evolution of four key pillars: driving strategic innovation, compelling creative excellence, expanding client partnerships and unifying talent-building programs.

Strategic depth and an accelerated commitment to innovation with a focus on data science is key to the agency’s evolution and success. Michelle Tisdale was promoted to Chief Analytics Officer, and Ashish Oak was hired as Chief Innovation Officer. The two will work together to keep TracyLocke at the forefront of data science and deliver unprecedented shopper and commerce intelligence for clients and the agency, while leveraging Omni, Omnicom’s people-based marketing orchestration platform.

Compelling creative excellence will remain a priority for the agency. Phil Camarota officially stepped into the Chief Creative Officer role, where he will continue to be responsible for directing the company’s creative capability and product, while partnering with creative leadership across the company to manage, direct and inspire compelling creativity. Sabrina Diez was promoted to Senior Vice President, Executive Creative Director, where she will partner with Camarota, playing a key role in fostering creative excellence across clients.

For client partnerships, Stephen Miller was named Chief Marketing Officer, with a focus on promoting TracyLocke’s evolved capabilities and developing business growth opportunities in collaboration with newly appointed Chief Client Officer, Michael Bartlett. The two will be focused on creating sustainable growth among new and existing clients.

Lastly, but most importantly, Alex Cuevas will be joining the executive leadership board as Senior Director of Talent Management and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Lead. She will be shaping the future of the agency’s talent experience and culture.

The complete executive leadership board includes representatives across business, creative, strategy, production, data science, innovation, finance and talent.

“We believe diversity is not only an economic accelerator, but a necessity to make great work and attract the industry’s best talent,” Manikas stated. “TracyLocke is proud to have an executive leadership board that not only represents our employees, but also the communities in which we reside. We remain committed to this focus.”

About TracyLocke:  

TracyLocke is an award-winning global agency that leverages insightful creativity and design thinking to drive commerce. With offices in North America and around the world, its employees are a blend of talented individuals with unique strengths, experiences and backgrounds. TracyLocke is part of the Omnicom Commerce Group and partners with clients such as PepsiCo, SC Johnson, Diageo, Pizza Hut, Godiva, Samsung, and the Dollar General Literacy Foundation. For more information about TracyLocke, visit www.tracylocke.com. 

About Omnicom Commerce Group: 

Omnicom Commerce Group (OCG) is a global community of four award-winning commerce agencies, working with brands and retailers to offer best in class consultancy, creativity and capability focused on driving increased conversion and transaction. OCG’s priority is to address the need for innovative multi-channel commerce expertise in the rapidly evolving world of retail and shopping. OCG encompasses 2,500 people across 19 markets – for more information please visit www.omnicomcommercegroup.com. OCG is part Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE: OMC), a leading global marketing and corporate communications company.