Carter Welch has been privileged to provide marketing, sales or consulting support to many organizations across a wide range of industries including the following:
Redwood Lumber Industry
Recapturing Market Leadership Position
Challenge: Rapidly losing market share, Redwood was viewed as old and irrelevant, severely declining in prior 2 decades.
Solution: We remade the Redwood brand by identifying consumer insights and exploiting competitors’ weak spots. We built an industry marketing coalition and found cost-effective ways to deliver the message via TV, social media, radio and PR. The Redwood industry grew nearly 50%, with 30 straight months of growth. Market share rose from 31% to 39% in just 3 years, overtaking the previous market leader.
Crisco Shortening Sticks
Leading Brand Turnaround Through Innovation
Challenge: Market share had declined due to new alternatives and the brand was viewed as stodgy and hard to use.
Solution: Despite huge internal resistance, we led a broad team to launch a new product form into test market in less than 6 months. Results doubled objectives, reversing a 10-year business decline, and the overall category grew. When rolled out nationally, P&G hailed the launch as one of its most successful new introductions of the year. Today, Crisco Sticks are enjoy near universal distribution in the US.
Brach’s Fruit Snacks
From “Near Death” to Market Leader
Challenge: Brand was nearing extinction, due to ineffective branding and insufficient critical mass to be a successful national brand.
Solution: Complete repositioning, with co-branding, licensing and flawless rollout. Share grew from 1% to 22%, becoming number 1. Distribution grew to 90%. In 3 years, brand became a turnaround success, growing from $10 to $60 million in retail sales, and grew the category for the 1st time in over 5 years. For this, Ad Age selected Carter Welch as one of its “Top 100 Marketers of the Year”. (Click for article.)
Pillsbury
Redirecting Spending to Drive Growth
Challenge: The brand got minimal results from tired promotions, and spending to drive sales was pocketed by retailers with no business results.
Solution: We developed a powerful promotion strategy to break through the clutter. By conducting in-depth analysis, we identified an alternative promotion strategy that boosted sales by over 50% in the region, compared to a decline in sales for the business outside the region. The company trumpeted the success and the program was successfully launched elsewhere.
Humboldt Redwood
Delivering Business Value to Grow Retail Sales
Challenge: The business faced a daunting challenge to expand distribution among retailers who perceived the brand to be a tired and old.
Solution: We developed an innovative approach by providing marketing support to dealers to drive their business growth. By delivering business value and focusing on helping customers grow, we gained trust. Over 100 different dealers took advantage of this support. Twice as many customers bought from us, and in addition to being more profitable, same store sales of our products grew.
Jim Dandy Dog Food
Brand Makeover Yields 100% Profit Increase
Challenge: A large, but not profitable regional brand sought geographic expansion, but needed to become more profitable to support expansion.
Solution: To drive more profit to justify and to fund expansion, we led a complete makeover for the brand, including raising prices. Makeover included packaging, promotion, in-store merchandising, and TV ads. Profit grew by more than 100%, which led to an agreement to launch the brand into new markets. Upon expansion, the brand attained a 10% market share in new markets in less than a year.
Maynard Public Schools
Re-branding a “David” to Beat a “Goliath”
Challenge: Like many public schools in the state, Maynard was losing students via choice. Their competitors were large and offered more services.
Solution: We developed a value proposition built on the strength of being small and the intimacy that brings. By “resetting the playing field”, we repositioned the big schools in a way that reinforced the power of our customer’s small size. We developed TV ads that aired on MTV locally, creating great buzz and positive response from students and parents. The story was picked up broadly, helping the district stem the tide of student defections.
Pentucket Medical
Innovative Approach to Marketing Healthcare
Challenge: The multi-specialty group practice was undergoing significant changes and needed to change consumer perception.
Solution: After conducting focus groups, we helped Pentucket Medical transform its image through the design of an innovative website and TV advertising incorporating video messages, testimonials and by personalizing their physicians. The brand was repositioned to better reflect the goals and desires of patients. Today, they continue to grow and enjoy a very positive reputation as an innovative market leader.
Crisco Pricing
Boldly Raising Prices to Grow Profit
Challenge: A successful older brand in a declining category feared losing share if it increased prices to try and grow profits.
Solution: For Crisco Shortening, we fought long-entrenched beliefs that market share would collapse with pricing. Through extensive business analysis backed by customer analysis, we successfully convinced the company to take a price increase, generating profit improvement, while successfully maintaining market share.