Your brand
is too important to trust to
just any agency.
Focus Your Marketing
with America's #1 Brand Positioning Agency.
Marketing without positioning is like traveling without an address. You waste time. You waste money. Instead, get focus to get results.
Too Much Media, Too Many Messages
Just a decade ago, the number of media types numbered around 150. This included traditional media — TV, radio, print and outdoor — combined with some nascent media — paid search, banner ads and online directories. Today, that number is nearing 5,000 and growing nearly every day. Social science research firm Yankelovich estimated the average number of marketing messages to which a consumer is exposed to have been 500 in the 1970s, 5,000 in 2006 and, now, between 6,000 to 10,000 ads every day in 2021.
Accomplish More With Less
Stop the confusion. Stop the waste. Your marketing shouldn’t have to work so hard. With clear differences, consumers and customers can make easy decisions. Innis Maggiore can help you differentiate your brand in the marketplace with an obvious, competitive position to stand for one thing and stand apart from everyone else.
Brand Differentiation
beats ordinary marketing.
Innis Maggiore doesn’t settle for marketing the ordinary way. Neither should you, because the differences are dramatic.
Positioning = Positive Results
Innis Maggiore is different from ordinary ad agencies because we always focus on what makes your brand different from your competition. Using brand positioning, we create your competitive difference simply and powerfully, for stronger branding that’s more effective and more efficient. After all, 1 message with 100% focus will outperform random messages with no focus any day.
Marketing made
with positioning
- 1 message, 100% focus
- Stronger branding
- More effective, more efficient
- Consumer clarity
- Competitive edge
- Consistency and commitment
Marketing made
without positioning
- Random messages, no focus
- Wishy-washy and weak
- Spend more to get less
- Consumer confusion
- Lack of clear difference
- Always trying something new
Instead of Big Money, We Use Big Ideas.
We’re asked for Big Ideas more than anything else: a campaign or event or package or video. The right Big Idea makes your marketing work — helping brands big and small win in the marketplace — and we make Big Ideas every day to dramatize our clients’ most meaningful brand difference.
Big Ideas
Here's the Short List of Some of Our Big Ideas:
Click on the logos below.
BIG CHALLENGE: Microsoft had soft sales after introducing its own internet provider service.
BIG IDEA: Position Microsoft’s online brand as the advanced Internet service (compared to then-leader AOL) and market it like software (because that’s Microsoft's expertise!). Overall response increased by 40% while saving $3 million (25%) on costs, earning The Microsoft Gold CD for Vendor Excellence.
BIG CHALLENGE: Louisiana-Pacific invented a new colorfast vinyl siding that made boldrich, fashionable colors possible for the first time.
BIG IDEA: Name the new line Norman Rockwell Siding and license the name and artwork of the beloved great American artist for advertising and packaging. The new brand broke industry sales records and was rated #1 by Consumer Reports.
BIG CHALLENGE: How to turn a 50-year-old family sawmill into a viable online seller.
BIG IDEA: Rebrand the sawmill to Baird Brothers Fine Hardwoods, emphasizing Baird’s high-end quality and using award-winning collateral and direct marketing, paid search and a new eCommerce website. It now generates online sales, shipping almost 10,000 premium custom products throughout the country.
BIG CHALLENGE: Introduce a breakthrough upholstery product to high-end interior designers in a business that still relies on (very) busy and cluttered trade shows.
BIG IDEA: Create the category of the first dry-erase urethane upholstery, called Sta-Kleen® Performance Fabric, and use a pitchman named The Erasable Man to actually wear a jacket made from the material at the shows! This won an award for exposure at the most important event and doubled the company's sales in two years.
BIG CHALLENGE: Launch a new product concept in a category (cottage cheese) considered old fashioned and boring.
BIG IDEA: Launch single-serve cottage cheese with real fruit inside — called Artisa™ Cottage Cheese — with a new position and brand tied to a lifestyle identity. To “live life uncottaged” is to look at things in a totally unexpected way, which led to increased sales conversions and new retail accounts, as well as a district ADDY for the website.
BIG CHALLENGE: Change perceptions about libraries as old, stuffy and just for books.
BIG IDEA: Reimagine Stark Library as a lifestyle destination to compete with businesses like Amazon, Google, Barnes & Noble, Walmart and Starbucks by radically reinventing it as The SmartStore, where everything is free®. Designed a bright, fun and contemporary lifestyle brand perfect for merchandising. The rebranding increased active cardholders by 7%+, circulation by 14% and online visits by 87.5%.
BIG CHALLENGE: Expand perception of a family-owned cable company with unsurpassed customer service to acquire more Internet customers.
BIG IDEA: Focus on the position of the best service for Internet, cable and phone with a brighter, happier branding and the motto, “We go the extra smile.” In addition to growing higher-tech customers, a 50th anniversary Facebook promotion increased followers by 116%, collected nearly 5,000 emails and garnered a 79% response to usage questions.
BIG CHALLENGE: Increase visits for Aultman Hospital’s orthopedic services, particularly difficult because elective surgeries are not covered by insurance.
BIG IDEA: Promote an online test called JointAware, using the visual symbol of a wooden artist’s model to represent joint stiffness and pain. Over 1,200 completed the online assessment, of whom 470 were reported to be “at risk” and given an offer of a free consultation, resulting in increased ortho revenue.
BIG CHALLENGE: Fight off increasingly stronger bank competition resulting from consolidation and mergers, while explaining what a credit union means.
BIG IDEA: A competitive position that makes CSE Federal Credit Union the “un-bank” in contrast to the big out-of-towners. This has been dramatized on TV, outdoor and social media as if a crusade — positioning CSE as the local alternative (good guys) with the message to “BANK LOCAL” (instead of with the big, bad guys). The new campaign has already created momentum toward influencing new credit union members, who actually “own the place!”
BIG CHALLENGE: Help a regional sauce product stand out and expand nationwide in a category with over 40 brands.
BIG IDEA: Reposition the MID’S® brand as True Sicilian Pasta Sauce™ to differentiate its authentic, slow-cooked, small-batch sauces while repositioning competitors that quick steam their products as inferior. The new branding has helped Northest Ohio's #3 brand sauce grow its franchise at home and nationwide.
BIG CHALLENGE: Introduce a Louisiana-Pacific innovation, roofing with a built-in heat barrier to help save energy.
BIG IDEA: Create a new category called Radiant Barrier Roofing and create a character named Roofus (the coolest penguin around!) to symbolize LP® TechShield® roofing and introduce the brand in key markets via a hypermarket approach, increasing installation from 1 in every 14 homes to 1 in every 5 in less than one year.
BIG CHALLENGE: Make a heritage position resonate with new generations of buyers to increase shelf space in a declining category (people moving away from dairy).
BIG IDEA: Reinvigorate the brand while maintaining loyalty with a total packaging line makeover supported by everything from a new website and television to point-of-sale materials and strong social media. The new branding — themed “Tradition you can taste” — won ADDYs for website and photography. A digital campaign for Smith's dip products resulted in a 20% increase in sales over the prior year.
Welcome to the
Appreciative Discovery®
We call this facilitated session “appreciative” because it helps you appreciate your organization’s meaning and relevance in view of prevailing realities. Together, we “discover” a clear brand positioning strategy, and then Innis Maggiore fashions an executive action plan for implementation of that strategy in the marketplace.
The Science of Brand Positioning
If you’re seeking a differentiating brand strategy, we invite you to utilize our proprietary positioning process — the Appreciative Discovery.
In a half-day moderated meeting with your key stakeholders, our team appreciates your native knowledge to help discover your brand’s most meaningful differentiated idea through four filters: Customer, Competition, Company and Context.
Founded 50 Years Ago.
Innis Maggiore remains independently owned, and today is ranked in the top 10% of the nation's agencies.
History
Innis Maggiore was founded in 1974, with growth for our clients steady and strong ever since — particularly since the appointment of Dick Maggiore as the agency's president in 1989. The mid-1990s marked an acceleration of national business, as Innis Maggiore began to build its reputation as the nation’s leading brand positioning agency fashioning actionable strategies and creative grounded in positioning strategy.
Background photo: Chuck Innis (l) and Dick Maggiore (r) start what was to become America’s #1 Positioning Ad Agency at the kitchen table.
Upgrade Your Brand
If you don’t have unlimited money, differentiation is the only way to have a strong brand. We believe positioning — marketing your most meaningful brand difference — is the best way to make your business successful. So did Jack Trout. The Father of Positioning Endorsed Innis Maggiore.
Before his passing in 2017, the mentor, friend and long-time associate of the agency said: “Innis Maggiore, like no other agency, has successfully turned the principles laid out in our positioning books and created a disciplined practice. These guys really do get it.”
Watch highlights from our Jack Trout event.
Jack Trout - Author & Father of Positioning
Our People
are your greatest resource.
What matters most about the people at Innis Maggiore is the way we work with our clients, because it's a reflection of a culture rooted in values you won't find at every agency; values rooted in our community and service organizations; in families, fellowship and faith. As a reflection of these values, we don't accept work we believe detrimental to society.
When we say "valuable," we’re not talking about account size or brand cachet; we place priority on long-term relationships, collaboration and invested knowledge. This is what you can expect from Innis Maggiore people.