2011 PROMO 100 Agency of the Year: #12 TracyLocke

TracyLocke operates within the philosophy, “creative with consequence.”

“It's our overarching rally cry,” says TracyLocke CEO Beth Ann Kaminkow. “Along with shopper insights, you can't lose the importance of being creative in the design, in our questioning of how we push the bounds and in the expression of the ideas that live at retail. The important part is that it's with consequence. This area is measurable and comes with the responsibility of driving results.”

The focus on creative has never been finer as the economy continues to take a toll on clients, including TracyLocke's many CPG clients hurt by commodity pricing, the price of corn and gas, and other factors. The results have been budget cuts and an 18 to 24-month revolving door for chief marketing officers putting additional pressure on the agency to perform.

“We felt their pain and cuts and how they have to be more focused on what drives business results,” says Kaminkow, who in February was named the agency's first female CEO. “There's a heightened sense of improving the marketing spend, and for the most part they haven't abandoned the kind of promotions that we do.”

One of the challenges is getting shoppers to think beyond price, to value.

“We get clear to the values of purchasing a brand,” says Chief Creative Officer Michael Lovegrove. “The more you can make a brand about equity and engagement, the less you have to rely on price as a driver to purchase.”

Take client Gatorade as an example. TracyLocke helped grow the business over the last few years by transitioning the brand from a hydration company to a sports nutrition company. New products were developed to consume before, during and after game play and marketed to young athletes.

“It was a big gamble,” Lovegrove says. “But we saw a shift in how people behaved around the brand.”

Turmoil Turnaround

TracyLocke, like many agencies, also felt the pain internally. Staff, bonuses and benefits were cut, yet the clients expected the same quality and speed in the work.

“It's been a challenge to weigh areas of investment and growth, to be at our best and be as competitive as we want to be,” Kaminkow says. “It's a constant picking and choosing where you place your own spend as an agency to best benefit your own employees and the business.”

TracyLocke's revenue fell from an estimated $126 million in 2008 to $102 million in 2009, before climbing back up to $122.4 million in 2010. Last year, as business picked up again, the agency, which ranked No. 12 on the PROMO 100 and is owned by Omnicom Group Inc., hired close to 100 people and has continued to hire this year, bringing its workforce up to about 525.

“It was a pretty great rebound in a short amount of time,” Kaminkow says.

Much of the 2010 increase in revenue, 85%, came from pitching and winning new business from existing clients, including Tropicana from PepsiCo, which it has worked with since 1982, the new Gatorade products, as well as merchandising, email and digital services work from Pizza Hut.

This hard-driving agency's lengthy roster of clients also includes, Yum! (1993), as well as newer account wins such as being named agency of record for Starbucks, Buffets Inc. and T-Mobile.

Purple for the People

As an indicator of its outstanding work, TracyLocke is a finalist in four 2011 PROMO Pro Award categories. The judging process is rigorous, with each campaign and accompanying creative reviewed by 26 peer judges during two phases.

In keeping with its philosophy of “Creative with Consequence” its promotion for 7-Eleven, the “7-Eleven Unity Tour” is a finalist in three categories: Best Creative, Best Retail Campaign and Best Campaign Generating Brand Awareness. (See page 46.)

During the contentious midterm political campaign season, President Obama derided Republicans as “standing, watching us, sippin' on a Slurpee” while Democrats pulled the car out of the ditch. The day after the elections he joked with reporters about hosting a Slurpee Summit at the White House. “When the president of the United States hands you a product endorsement, you take it and run,” 7-Eleven said.

Within 48 hours, 7-Eleven had a new flavor — Purple for the People — and a promotion to go with it. A caravan of five Slurpee sampling trucks hit the road for a 14-city tour where at each stop samples, Unity Tour T-shirts, buttons and bracelets were handed out.

Daily webisodes posted on Facebook documented the 21-day trip. The tour culminated in Washington, D.C., with a public Slurpee Summit and free concert by Grammy winner Blues Traveler at the City Center.

The event generated 1.6 billion media impressions, including coverage by every major network, newspaper and political website. Facebook fans climbed from 700,000 to 3.3 million fans in just two weeks.

Here's what some of the judges in the Final Round had to say:

“Really simple. Spot-on creative. The logo development is hilarious and perfect. It was a perfect storm for awareness of the brand. Everyone talked about it. Strongest creative.”

The Case for a Cause

A second promotion, “Pepsico Kroger Breast Cancer Awareness” is a finalist in the “Best Retail Campaign” category. TracyLocke is also ranked No. 4 on the PROMO 100 ranking of the Top 10 agencies with a specialty in retail marketing.

Each year, Kroger and its 2,461 stores raise millions of dollars for breast cancer research, education and support under the “Giving Hope a Hand” campaign. It relies on packaged goods companies like PepsiCo to participate. Last year, PepsiCo upped the ante, putting nine of its biggest brands in the program — Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, Frito-Lay, Quaker, Gatorade, Tropicana, Lipton, Sun Chips and Stacy's — up from five. It also donated $800,000 to Sharing Courage as part of Kroger's $3 million contribution.

The creative carried the “Hope” message and included breast cancer survivors and their loved ones, all of them women who worked for either PepsiCo or Kroger. Eighteen women were featured, each in the region where she lived and worked to bring the program local. Custom packaging told the survivors' stories.

Pepsi drove $16.3 million in incremental sales across the nine brands and a 5% increase in total PepsiCo sales at Kroger versus one year ago. It also strengthened emotional ties with shoppers through the merchandising displays, packaging and online and social media activities. Videos of raw footage of the interviews were posted on YouTube and at SharingCourage.com.

One of the judges said, this promotion is the “most clear-cut example. At the end of the day, both benefited.” “Everything we do has an effect on the brand. We're ultimately trying to drive results and consequences with ideas and creative,” Lovegrove says.