Market leader Foster Farms has chosen Odysseus Arms for its Corn Dogs brand. The innovative San Francisco firm—a winner at AdAge’s 2014 Small Agency Awards—was selected by Foster Farms because of an intensive consumer listening technique that has dramatically increased advertising effectiveness for other agency clients such as E. & J. Gallo’s Carlo Rossi, Capital One and NBC/Universal.
“OdysseusArms has an impressive body of work and brings a unique approach to teasing out consumer insights that really stood out,” said Emily Fleischmann, Sr. Marketing Manager Prepared Foods at Foster Farms. “We are excited to have them as a partner in development of breakthrough communication on Foster Farms Corn Dogs.”
“We’re getting really personal with our research—drilling down to find out what consumers in our target market really care about,” continued agency partner Franklin Tipton. “Our consumer listening process has dramatically improved our integrated campaign results, attracting big national brands like Gallo and now Foster Farms.” Tipton and his colleagues are excited for the opportunity to put their approach to work for a national brand in the food category.
Agency partner Libby Brockhoff, former a founding partner and namer of Mother PLC in London, has been refining the agency’s hands-on consumer listening techniques since Odysseus Arms launched in 2011. Building ‘tribes’ of two dozen or more consumers in the target market and then spending over 100 real time hours with them, Odysseus Arms is able to vet their likes, dislikes and responses to inform message strategy and creative. This highly personal research approach allows advertisers to reach their target with “a much greater level of certainty,” says Brockhoff. “This steers away from current agency trends,” she says, “where they base their insights on customers from a cursory look at big data—our entire agency is spending time with the people we are targeting.” She continued, “Unlike the typical agency environment—where research is a dirty word—empathy is our unfair ‘super hero’ advantage.”
Since opening its doors in 2011, Odysseus Arms has crafted a wide range of campaigns that have made a measurable impact for NBC/Universal’s E! network, YouTube, Capital One and Gallo.
Their past work spans a wide range of creatively “engineered” campaigns, including a project for Amnesty International that was named Buzzfeed’s No. 2 Most Effective ad campaign and helped influence the White House—and subsequently, encouraged the U.N. to pass a global Arms Trade Treaty on April 3, 2013. Their national integrated campaign for YouTube amplified the exposure of the growing “YouTube Stars” well beyond the video platform, delivering the self-made stars to a vastly wider audience through broadcast, digital, OOH as well as search, display and video ads across Google’s ad network.
The agency won the Foster Farms business with support from media outfit Noble People, and will partner with the group throughout the process.
About Odysseus Arms
We’re “rewiring” the way content, advertising and PR campaigns are conceived, crafted and integrated. Built on a heritage of Cannes-winning work, OA is writing the next chapter of media design. Strong Consumer Listening techniques blended with data analysis and storytelling craft fuel creative solutions that are propelling our partner brands to unprecedented results. www.o-arms.com
