Introducing Walrus Innovations – our product innovation arm.
We’re happy to announce a new discipline under the Walrus umbrella: product innovation. This is a project that we’ve been working on for over a year now, and we are finally ready to announce the launch of our first new product: Berns’ Business Mints, built entirely in-house by our team.
Why we’re doing it:
There is a prevailing notion in marketing that brands don’t matter anymore. Ad technology and its acolytes have marketers believing that successful products no longer need to invest in brand at all. That through the repetitive optimization and refinement of performance media marketers can much more efficiently achieve success. We are of the mind that this is complete horse shit. From an ingredient standpoint most products are exactly the same. Competing products are made in the same facilities with the same ingredients. Many private label brands are 100% duplicates of the more expensive brands they sit next to on the shelf. And yet people still choose name brands over generics. Because brand matters. So as marketers continue to pull away from the only true differentiator they have, we see an opportunity. We are building a suite of brands entirely from scratch, using all the same tenets that we apply to our client work – times ten. The goal is to sell a ton of product and upend the categories we enter, not to provide a creative showcase for the agency, although that should come naturally if this is a success. Secondarily this puts us fully in our clients’ shoes in a way we haven’t been before. We often hear that advertising is only a small percentage of their job – we are going to find out first-hand what their full scope of responsibilities is. This will make us a better, more knowledgeable partner.
It’s an offering over 20 years in the making. Launches, packaging design, ad buying, sampling programs, social media, POS, positioning – these are all things we’ve been doing since day one for clients like Amazon, Bazooka, General Mills, hello, Lowes Foods, The Farmer’s Dog. And the parts that are new to us, we’ve been able to tap into our network of marketers for help. It’s been amazing how many clients both current and past have been supportive of this, and have given their time to help us get it off the ground.
Going forward, we’ll be chronicling our journey here on the blog. Check back soon!
