BRAND STRATEGY AND CAMPAIGN EXECUTION
WEST TOWN BANK & TRUST
The concept of “white space” is so highly valued in product and service innovation because it’s so hard to create. It takes an extremely thorough understanding of a given market, and a lot of creativity and persistence. The key stakeholders at West Town Bank & Trust checked all of those boxes.
In 2020, as cannabis marched toward legalization, hundreds of businesses opened to take advantage of the “green rush.” Most businesses in the risk-averse banking industry stayed away from hemp, an incredibly versatile and potentially profitable crop, because it’s also surrounded by complex and ever-evolving rules and regulations. West Town did their homework, built the right partnerships, and became exhaustively well-versed in the legalities around hemp.
When it was time to let the world know they were open for business, Twist partnered with Passion Play, West Town’s design agency, to create the strategic foundation and the Big Idea to bring that strategy to life. Thus was born “Hemp Banks Here.” As simple as it seems, it was a bold statement when most banks were actively avoiding banking hemp. West Town quickly acquired a thriving hemp business, turned down many potential customers to be able to serve the most qualified partners, and hired additional staff to accommodate the new business.
“From the first time I had the initial discovery call with Passion Play and Twist until we completed our “Hemp Banks Here” Campaign, I was truly “wowed” by their work, creativity and overall enthusiasm. But most of all, my experience with them was one of the most enjoyable working relationships I have had which is certainly key when trusting someone to give your bank a new face. “Hemp Banks Here” is now our trademark and has created an amazing industry for us that we would have not had without their creativity, dedication and commitment to our successful marketing plan.”
- Melissa Marsal, EVP/Chief Operating Officer, West Town Bank & Trust
hand2mind
hand2mind is a 50+ year old company that designs amazing educational toys that enable kids to learn and play at the same time. They’d developed a new brand positioning and equity attributes, and asked Twist to translate the internal brand equity into a Big Idea and externally-facing campaign.
We created the “From here2anywhere” campaign, clearly communicating hand2mind’s ability to not just provide learning and fun, but also help kids on their journey to amazing new places. Within the first month, hand2mind saw a 95% increase in branded search volume on Amazon, and 74% video completion rate on paid social, leading their Facebook ad manager to say “our video views campaign is KILLING it!”
“We are thrilled by how well the campaign reflects our equity and brings it to life in a highly engaging way. The new ads are helping to boost our awareness and drive our sales. And, we are just getting started! We are able to leverage it across all channels where we play including our website, online video, retailer ad platforms, social media, email, trade ads, and more.”
- Sari Winick, Chief Marketing Officer, hand2mind
HOWL AT THE MOON
A classic marketing story for anyone interested in creating a basic brand strategy but not sure how it works or why you should do it. Twist helped Howl at the Moon clearly and powerfully articulate their basic strategic elements so they could start tying everything together and use one voice to market the Howl brand, saving them time, money, and lots of antacids. Anywhere the Howl story is told and brought to life, the work we did together will help the people who work anywhere at Howl at the Moon tell it consistently and convincingly, and ensure a strong culture with a strong brand and consistent messaging for years to come.
“As the owner of a business that has to move fast and hasn't really worked with marketing consultants, I wasn’t sure what to expect and was even a little skeptical about spending the time and money. But the work Danny did helped us crystallize the thinking we’d been doing for years; he didn’t create anything brand new, he just synthesized what was in our heads and came up with something that nailed the essence of our brand. It provided the strategic foundation to help us communicate to our people how to talk about and live the Howl at the Moon brand, and gave us the language and tools we needed to start creating materials with a consistent look and feel. When Danny presented the essence video to the managers at our annual meeting, there was a standing ovation, which told us the work was spot on.”
- Bradd O’Brien, President, Howl at the Moon
CHAMPLAIN COLLEGE
Twist was tasked to differentiate Champlain College from their competition and provide a compelling message to work internally with students and faculty, and externally with prospective students. Champlain wanted to communicate to the people who shared their focus and determination, and do it in a provocative and compelling way.
The result was “Champlain Rules.” It’s an iconoclastic campaign that features non-traditional and unexpected “rules” that are really anti-rules, meant to challenge and inspire current and prospective students, like “Never been done before? It’s not a warning, it’s an invitation,” and “Choose professors who profess less and inspire more.” And of course, because Champlain is in the skier’s paradise of Burlington, Vermont: “Studying moguls is still considered studying.” The campaign won three Awards of Excellence from the UCDA (University and College Designers Association).
“In higher education there is a difficult balance between being market-relevant and true to mission. Unlike many industries, there is not the ability to change strategic directions based on product, or for that matter, significantly change identity, to become more attractive to the marketplace. Thus, one of the key marketing processes needs to take the historical, experiential and product-oriented attributes and make them as appealing and emotional as possible.
I have been in higher education for more than 20 years, and I have yet to see anyone as talented as Danny Schuman in creating new marketing life when it seems all avenues have been explored. His skill is to identify the most important parts of an institution’s existence and turn them into impactful ideas and words so that people naturally gravitate towards them. If you are seeking a new, and better, way of positioning your college or university, hire Danny.”
- Ian Mortimer, Vice President, Enrollment Management and Marketing
ALLRISE LEGAL COUNCIL
Service businesses like law firms often struggle with differentiation. But every business with a product or service to sell has a distinct story to tell. Attorney Leslee Cohen had a great story to tell after she rebranded her firm as AllRise. She did Twist a great service by creating a name with so much inherent meaning. It was up to us to pull out her story and give it shape and language.
Twist crafted a new strategic platform for AllRise, inspired by the philosophies of Ruth Bader Ginsbur,g and comprised of three C’s: Commitment, Competence, and Character. This strategic platform provided the foundation that enabled AllRise to tell a clear, consistent, and compelling story to their optimal target audience.
Twist helped AllRise stand apart from other firms by being a strong and sensitive advocate for her clients, and the language we created for her home page struck this differentiated and positive balance. The language resonated strongly with Leslee and her staff, and most important, with the firm’s current and prospective minority-owned and mostly female-owned businesses.
“I wanted AllRise to be perceived as different from other law firms. I had a good idea of what that meant, and I knew it could be compelling and different, I just needed help articulating it. I didn’t want to just explain who we are and what we do, I wanted to evoke a feeling and create a real connection between AllRise and our best potential clients. Danny nailed it with the right language and messaging to help us differentiate from other firms, and he wrote the content for our website to bring it all to life.”
- Leslee Cohen, Managing Partner, AllRise Legal Counsel
BRIGHTKINS
The Brightkins brand was created by the experts at Learning Resources, who have decades of experience creating great educational resources that engage audiences and stimulate a love of learning. They employed that expertise to create Brightkins, a line of interactive toys and training tools for pets.
Being a new product in an unfamiliar category, Brightkins needed to both educate and create awareness. Twist created a simple, memorable Big Idea that drove home the product’s name and highlighted the product’s benefits. We produced modular vignettes that allowed for great flexibility in video and social executions, enabling Brightkins to roll out the campaign at the same time the products debuted on shelf.
“The Twist team was wonderful to work with from start to finish, from ideation through the delivery of finished assets! Not only did they deliver a global brand campaign that would educate and engage consumers in multiple languages, it also generated significant excitement within the organization and supported national retail distribution gains.
As strategic partners, they listened to objectives, were open to feedback, provided options and solutions throughout the development and production process, and at times, with much professional tack, pushed for what they felt would best serve the brand providing rationale to support their recommendations. What I appreciated was that it wasn’t about their own ego, it was very clearly them acting as brand stewards ensuring they delivered the best campaign possible.”
- Caryn Paget, Marketing Director, Learning Resources
MILLERCOORS
The client team had a brilliant idea for a new brew, and they came to Twist with two goals: One, to build a case and internal momentum around the new beer; and two, to create a collaborative process that would include several of their agencies with different areas of expertise to bring it to life. Together with the agency partners, we crafted the story behind this new beer brand.
RICEWORKS
Riceworks makes better-for-you, incredibly delicious snacks, but they’re a tiny player in the category. To reach snackers who were interested in trying a new snack but unaware of Riceworks, we created :06 and :30 YouTube pre-roll videos to break through the endless clutter. With an extremely low budget, we created the “Crunchy Nutritious Deliciousness” campaign, leading to incredible engagement and outpacing expectations for coupon downloads and visits to the Riceworks page on Amazon.
Name Creation
WAYFORWARD RESOURCES
Middleton Outreach Ministry (MOM) had been providing food security and housing stability to members of the Middleton, Wisconsin community since 1980. They transitioned to a community-based organization in 2007, and over time, expanded beyond Middleton. They knew the “MOM” name didn’t accurately depict who they were and the services they provided. In 2022,they hired Twist to help them create their new name.
This was an especially tricky assignment because so many people knew and loved them as MOM. They needed a name that would respect their history and values, and also propel them into the future as a diverse and extremely resourceful and creative problem-solving organization.
While the basic structure of every naming process is similar, every project is driven by what we learn about our clients along the way. With MOM, we learned that their staff and board craved a very creative, interactive process. We created new mechanisms to help them solve in the way that worked best for them. It wasn’t just successful, it was fun! The final name, WayForward Resources, struck just the right chord and was embraced by staff, board, donors and the community they serve.
“You never know where a process is going to lead, and Danny knew how to shepherd our group of staff and board members in a way that grounded us and framed important insights from our vast stakeholder community. Danny also was ready and open to pivot when we wanted to look at the information from yet another angle while considering our options for this decision.”
- Ellen Carlson, Executive Director, WayForward Resources
MERCER FOODS
Mercer had been approached with a great opportunity by one of the biggest wholesalers in the world: create a branded freeze-dried fruit product to sell in their stores. To help create a great brand around their high-quality product, Mercer turned to Twist to create a name, visual identity, and packaging.
In two months, Twist and Mercer got to a brand-relevant, legally viable, quantitatively consumer-validated name, and in two more months, our design partner created an overall look and packaging for different flavors, needs, and sizes that gave life to the new name and excited the wholesaler, as well as other potential retailers.
“Danny was instrumental in helping us build a new brand from initial concept through to in store and online execution. He was absolutely integral in helping us understanding the category, competition and target consumers and then formulating all aspects of the brand from the name, positioning, packaging and retail execution strategy. We couldn’t have done it without him.”
- Wayne Carpenter, Managing Director, Lake Pacific Partners (Owner, Mercer)
LEARNING BRIDGE EARLY EDUCATION CENTER
The Child Care Center of Evanston had a problem: Their name. Loyalists loved it, but nobody else could remember it, and despite being an institution in Evanston, Illinois for decades, their enrollment was declining. Twist took the non-profit through a diligent strategic process, guiding families, patrons, teachers and board members to a rechristening as The Learning Bridge Early Education Center. We also developed a new logo and simple brand identity. The work created new energy among current supporters and brought in new families that helped increase both enrollment and revenue by double digits.
“Changing our 73-year-old organization's name and repositioning its role in the community was daunting. Danny and the Twist team turned the resistance of board members and lifelong donors into a thoughtful, playful investigation that allowed leadership to grow in understanding and confidence. Danny's expertise guided us through the launch of our new name and logo and messaging strategies. It was a joy to measure significant growth in volunteer activity, family enrollment and engagement, and board membership and donor giving in just eighteen months.”
- Jenny Merdinger, Director of Philanthropy, Learning Bridge Early Education Center
PRODUCT AND SERVICE INNOVATION
GATORADE
Gatorade’s insights and innovation teams partnered with Twist to rebuild the innovation strategy from the ground up, co-create need-state driven insights, and fill the pipeline with new products and services reflecting Gatorade’s strategic goals, to help position the innovation strategy and pipeline for long-term success.
The groundwork for successful innovation is often established well before products hit the shelf. In this case it took years, but it happened. The work Twist did with Gatorade’s innovation team led to the creation of new products like G Zero Tablets and Gatorade Pods, which are available as of this writing in 2023.
“Fuzzy front end innovation in a mature market can be difficult. Doing so without compromising the brand’s equity and leveraging core capabilities takes a talented team that understands your brand strategy.
Twist more than delivered. The team uncovered key athlete insights, developed innovative concepts that went far beyond another flavor in the bottle, and did so while strengthening the brand’s equity. Years later it’s thrilling to see these products fueling athletes in competition.“
- Heather Smith, Senior Director, Global Strategy and Insights, Gatorade
HERSHEY’S SPREADS
Hershey’s makes some of the highest quality and most-loved chocolate in the world, from bars to cups to kisses. One format they hadn’t mastered was a spread. As they worked on a formulation that enabled them to create the optimal consistency, they hired Twist to help create new ideas for Hershey’s Spreads flavors and formats.
The Twist team helped Hershey’s develop key consumer insight platforms for spreads to fill the long-term innovation pipeline. We created concepts for quantitative and qualitative testing, including tubes, tubs, dips, kits, bars, sheets, edible spoons and spreadable kisses. With several concepts validated though the research process, Hershey’s started simply, with almond and hazelnut flavors, and plans to expand from there. Ultimately though, they weren’t able to create a product formulation that stood up to their extremely high standards of quality.
“I recommend selecting Twist Your Thinking due to Danny's long-standing trustworthiness as a business partner. Over the years, Danny has consistently demonstrated intelligence, creativity, and a collaborative approach. His ability to curate an exceptional extended team tailored to each project's specific needs is remarkable. Additionally, Danny seamlessly interacts with our internal members and other vendors, fostering effective working relationships. Notably, even when faced with tight timelines, Danny remains flexible and consistently delivers excellent work.”