Smith's

As one of Innis Maggiore’s legacy clients, Smith’s partners with us on everything from product packaging design and advertising to website creation and promotional programs. Given the nature of its products (predominantly dairy) and the brand position we’ve dramatized with the tagline, “Tradition you can taste,” it makes sense that the year-end holiday season is crucial to the company, as well as a peak sales season for many Smith’s products.

Put more succinctly, Smith’s wants to be noticed during this time of year. We had been employing a recipe contest for several years, but inevitably the interest in that event began waning over time.

Innis Maggiore put some fresh thinking into finding new possibilities to promote Smith’s fresh products. The obvious winner was to utilize another contest, one that both took advantage of people’s natural affinity for pets and the alignment of pets with farm animals.

Even we were surprised at the degree people love to take pictures of their pets to share. According to a survey of 1,000 dog parents, they take 13,200 photos of their dogs during their lifetime, while more than 1/3 have their dog as their phone screensaver. Another survey of 2,000 showed that 35% of pet parents have more photos of their furbabies than their kids (27%) or partners (16%), taking an average of 400 pics of their pets annually.

We set the tone with the whimsical name, “Happy PAWlidays” Pet Photo Contest, in which entrants uploaded a photo of their pet celebrating the holidays for a chance to win one grand prize of $1,000 and two runner-up prizes of free Smith's dairy products for a year.

To get attention and impel action, the creative was characterized by a joyful style for a joyful time of the year, starring our own dairy influencer, an utterly cute and seasonally attired cow.

We recommended (and the client enthusiastically approved) a cause-related overlay for Smith’s to donate a matching $1,000 to the Wayne County Humane Society.

Social media (both Facebook and Pinterest) was fashioned to garner initial attention, link to a means of entry, and keep the promotion prominent. Its content calendar 1) introduced the contest; then 2) played up the prizes; 3) spotlighted submissions in an ongoing sequence; 4) communicated urgency about the last day to enter; and 5) announced winners and showed winning entries. Display retargeting ads expanded the entry points for the promotion. Other campaign elements included connected TV spots repurposed as online videos to reach a mass audience throughout Northeast Ohio, and POS materials to bring the promo right into the store.

All led to a dedicated contest landing page to upload photos, provide required info, view contest details, and access official rules.

The Facebook ads achieved an average click-through rate (CTR) of 4%, well above the industry average of 0.9%, while the video ad on Pinterest had 18,674 thruplays with an average CTR of 0.33%.

With the combination of Online Video (OLV), Connected TV (CTV), and display retargeting, the campaigns successfully generated 914 clicks and almost 2 million impressions. 523,474 people watched the video to 75% completion. Together, these efforts combined to motivate 1,178 pet photo entries to the landing page, a 300% increase over the previous year’s traditions contest.

Naturally, this level of client success led to a repeat of the promotion at the end of 2024. Year two of Smith’s “Happy PAWlidays” Pet Photo Contest received a whopping 3,279 entries of furry friends in their festive fits — nearly triple the first year's total. We achieved over 1.2 million Facebook and over 2 million programmatic impressions for above-industry-average click-through rates resulting in 18,000 clicks. Holy cow, indeed!

Massillon Museum

Massillon Museum is a small but nice, two-story attraction in the small but nice town best known for high school football. Its operating budget is smaller and less nice, while its marketing budget is more so in both aspects. Innis Maggiore began our lengthy relationship with the museum crew with support to pass an operating levy (which succeeded) and a rebranding effort that repositioned the brand and focused on making people of all sorts welcome to a destination that celebrates its history while exhibiting art for all.

We created a more friendly (brand) moniker, a less formal nickname that was a contraction of the full name: from Massillon Museum … to MassMu, and designed a new visual identity system, also more friendly, inviting, contemporary, and colorful than that associated with the museum.

The agency has produced campaigns for major exhibitions devoted to Andy Warhol and a trio of nature photographers for an installation titled “Fragile Waters” that featured Ansel Adams, Ernest H. Brooks II, and Dorothy Kerper Monnelly. Innis Maggiore also created a new MassMu website, challenging ourselves to make a website as unique as the museum, and even designed two award-winning permanent sections of the expanded space, the Paul Brown Museum and an Innovators of Massillon display.

Most recently, we’ve worked with the MassMu team on a campaign for a fashion/costume exhibition in conjunction with the HBO series, “The Gilded Age.” The main components were social and digital marketing, outdoor, and print in regional publications as well as Smithsonian Magazine.

The extensive social marketing campaign was based on a strategy to increase awareness of the museum exhibit, drive traffic to the museum website, and promote partnerships with local businesses to bring visitors to the area to view the exhibit. Results were outstanding — even by Innis Maggiore standards.

The awareness effort, built to educate its audience on the museum and the exhibit, resulted in 1,005,715 impressions, 11,559 link clicks, 2,968 reactions, 182 comments, and 513 shares on Facebook; along with 328,587 impressions, 8,212 link clicks, 1,598 reactions, 16 comments, and 427 shares on Instagram. A sweepstakes ad, meant to drive awareness and engagement, brought in 39,185 impressions, 539 link clicks, 95 reactions, 6 comments, and 12 shares on Facebook; together with 25,879 impressions, 208 link clicks, 49 reactions, and 9 shares on Instagram. An event promotion ad, crafted to grow awareness and attendance to exhibit, created 87,639 impressions, 1,915 link clicks, 354 reactions, 15 comments, and 71 shares on Facebook. The overall social marketing campaign totaled 1,487,005 impressions, 22,433 link clicks, 5,064 reactions, 219 comments, and 1,032 shares — which was anything but gilding the lily!

SARTA

Saying thanks can make all the difference. Since 2012, Innis Maggiore has conducted many campaigns and projects for the Stark Area Regional Transit Authority (SARTA) to thank riders, drivers, corporations, and organizations. After a successful and award-winning campaign commemorating its 25th year — which we themed, “Happy SARTAversary!” — Innis Maggiore worked with the SARTA team to devote the following year to spotlighting how its services help real people to demonstrate the many aspects of how SARTA positively impacts the community in so many ways.

We named it “We Ride Together,” which was intended to communicate the double meaning of SARTA’s literal service of riding Stark County residents where they need to go, together with the more inspirational message that we’re all in this together and SARTA is always here to help our community.

The campaign was entirely devoted exclusively to riders, letting them tell their own stories in their own words — many whom could not otherwise get to their workplace, school, doctor’s appointments, or stores without SARTA’s valuable service. As SARTA’s agency of record, Innis Maggiore was proud to record and deploy heartwarming proof of the value SARTA brings to the community through video, audio, and written storytelling.

The core of this effort was social marketing, in concert with digital marketing, print, bus signage, and station posters — all showing riders. The goal was to increase awareness of SARTA’s service benefits by emphasizing the SARTA/rider/community relationship. We actually interviewed riders on the bus type they frequent (which necessitated turning off the engine and thus the air conditioner on hot summer days in order to best hear our rider subjects!) to create video and audio content for our social marketing implementation.

We helped the client monitor metrics such as social media engagement and click rates, which experienced healthy enhancements. It was also interesting to see the relative difference between each person’s stories, since our social media strategy was built around having each rider get their due one at a time in weekly sequence.

The entire campaign resulted in a total of 451,855 impressions, 282 link clicks, and 410 reactions on Facebook. The range of metrics was 53,907 impressions, 53 link clicks, and 37 reactions for Elaine; 51,543 impressions, 40 link clicks, and 31 reactions for Tia; 48,242 impressions, 2 link clicks, and 34 reactions for Donna; 47,377 impressions, 2 link clicks, and 47 reactions for Keith; 47,082 impressions, 0 link clicks, and 43 reactions for Tom; 42,592 impressions, 44 link clicks, and 46 reactions for Barbra; 42,292 impressions, 51 link clicks, and 58 reactions for Brenda; 40,219 impressions, 31 link clicks, and 36 reactions for Harry; 39,521 impressions, 28 link clicks, and 35 reactions for Patricia; and 39,080 impressions, 31 link clicks, and 43 reactions for Addie.

MID’S True Sicilian Pasta Sauce

Innis Maggiore helped two regional powerhouses score big with a multi-year co-promotion of two Northeast Ohio favorites — MID’S True Sicilian Pasta Sauce and the Cleveland Browns.

For the past two years, the area’s favorite sauce and the area’s favorite sports team have partnered to create a limited-edition jar series, an on-pack promotion supported by a campaign featuring social marketing, POS and off-shelf product displays, video, radio, a “Dawg Pound Drive” at the stadium with a MID’S tent, and a dedicated promo landing page.

The program started in part as an NFL initiative for teams to partner with local businesses to support their communities. MID’S seemed the logical choice because the Browns have a fanatic following and MID’S has fanatic fans who will eat no other pasta sauce, making this a perfect opportunity to align with the “home team” for both brands to reach each other’s fans. MID’S also gets the credential of being a proud sponsor of an NFL team, while benefiting from exposure to hundreds of thousands of NE Ohio fanatics with a host of advertising messages on a variety of media about the collector labels on MID’S packages.

The first year, jars had seven flavors in the collection featuring player photography, while the second series was more streamlined at three, with the designs incorporating a beloved historic icon, a Dawg Pound “sauce mascot,” and the famous orange team helmet.

The second year social media marketing ran from Oct. 10 through Nov. 12 and consisted of a Facebook and Instagram ads campaign, with ads directed to the dedicated landing page URL. The client spent only $500, yet the ads were shown in 19 different placements across the two platforms, geotargeted to Akron (+25 mi), Canton (+25 mi), Cleveland (+25 mi), and Massillon (+25 mi). We also chose an interests category for those who were fans of the Cleveland Browns.

Innis Maggiore efforts yielded 2,464 clicks with a CTR of 5.48%. The overall results were nothing short of fantastic, with MID’S/Browns fanatics increasing product sales by 37% in Northeast Ohio for the duration of the campaign, which accounts for 100,000 more jars moved because of the limited edition packaging and our social marketing promotion.

Robertson Heating Supply — Rheem HVAC Distributor

Rheem's leading distributor for their HVAC products in Ohio is Robertson Heating Supply. The distributor came to Innis Maggiore to increase sales as well as improve plans, creative execution, social presence, and get measurable results.

Specifically, Robertson wanted help for its Fall campaign to drive leads to its Rheem Pro Partner dealers in Cincinnati and Columbus and introduce tracking to determine what’s working and what isn’t.

Innis Maggiore recommended a dedicated landing page for the campaign rather than the general Rheem.com website. It would solve the problem of Robertson having no way of tracking its campaigns and provide clear results to share with leadership and dealers.

We developed a strategic, integrated, multimedia plan for the client to support its Fall home heating equipment campaign, with all traffic directed to a landing page created by us both to get leads and track effectiveness. Social marketing was employed to provide the consumer a compelling reason to go to that landing page to find out more and contact a Robertson Rheem dealer. The agreed-upon KPIs were clicks, site traffic, form fills, calls, and dealer feedback.

Innis Maggiore performed forecasts for social ads with a spot created by the agency that was also deployed as a programmatic video; implemented campaigns on Facebook, Google search, and programmatic platforms; monitored and optimized performance throughout the campaign; and reported monthly, culminating with a final report summarizing its performance to present at client dealer meetings.

We designed the crucial landing page to be true to the Rheem brand and communicate what’s meant by the theme, “a new degree of comfort;” promote special offers; allow the website visitor to download product brochures and easily view Rheem innovations; and find the dealers nearest them through both search and map functionality.

Our development team created fields to populate the landing page with images and content; implemented desktop and mobile designs; and hooked up the Google Maps API for a map feature with custom markers and search functionality.

The Rheem campaign reached over 144,000 people in just 8 weeks, with 5,141 clicks and 398,496 impressions on Facebook. The programmatic campaign, which consisted of online video and display retargeting ads, received 686,580 impressions and 1,580 clicks. Google search ads had 25,700 impressions and 1,200 clicks with a 4.6 CTR (the industry standard is 2.4%) with over 350 conversions (dealer web clicks, calls, or form submissions).

Orlando Baking

Orlando Baking Co., a leading Northeast Ohio bakery that balances Old-World style with New-World innovation, produces more than 250 varieties of fresh and frozen hearth-baked bread, rolls, and specialty items. When the fifth-generation family business observed its 150th anniversary, Innis Maggiore created a social marketing promotion called “The Great American Sandwich Search,” a contest for the most imaginative and tasty recipes, with winners chosen by Cleveland celebrity judges.

233 sandwich recipes were entered in the contest, making the winners selections extremely challenging. The $1,500 grand prize winner was “Oktoberfest Sandwich,” which was also selected as the “Best Culturally Inspired Sandwich.”

The “Best Sandwich for Sports Fans” category winner was the “Original Hot Italian Sub;” “Best Grilled Cheese with a Twist” was “Egg in a Hole Grilled Cheese Sandwich;” “Best Breakfast Sandwich” was “Breakfast in Bread Sandwich;” and “Best Plant-Based Sandwich” was “Marvelous Mushroom Burger.” As you can see from these names, entrants took this contest seriously, and naturally, if the sandwiches are the best in Northeast Ohio, they have to be the best in America.

A select panel of five Northeast Ohio celebrity judges helped determine the category winners, while the Orlando Baking Co. team conducted a taste test at the bakery to determine the grand prize winner.

In addition to conceptualizing and promoting the contest, Innis Maggiore also helped make the Orlando Baking brand a winner. The event garnered several thousand contest page visits, more than 2 million impressions, and nearly 40% new Facebook followers. In case you want to taste some or all of the Great American Sandwich Search winners, the recipes are available on Orlando social media channels. Enjoy!

Sunless, Inc.

Sunless, Inc. is the leading B2B manufacturer of spray tanning equipment for tanning salons across the U.S. and Australia under the Mystic Tan, Norvell, and VersaSpa brands.

The client purchased the rights to “National Spray Tanning Day,” which provided the perfect opportunity for Innis Maggiore to showcase all services in the agency to help the client's retailers drive awareness and traffic to salons with a consumer-facing campaign featuring special offers for its first-ever edition. The main message was that spray tanning is a safe way to create a lively glow for a healthy appearance.

Setting the foundation for our aggressive endeavors, Innis Maggiore's public relations experts announced the news via PR Newswire; set up multiple live on-air spray tanning demonstrations from Wisconsin to Louisiana, developing talking points and coaching the company’s brand ambassadors; and invited Los Angeles-area health and beauty editors to the “It’s Glow Time” event. In total, we garnered $1.7 million in publicity value to 68 million people.

We then developed a promotional postcard, FAQ sheet, audio streaming spot, and videos for use on social media. As a leading social marketing agency, Innis Maggiore then created and deployed the most innovative means to engage our audiences.

For Snapchat, we created a filter in Lens Studio; utilized pre-made templates; and gave the visitors the ability to retouch their faces to create a smoother appearance, utilize directional lighting for a “glow” look, and change intensity with a built-in slider tool. The results glowed, too, with 274,667 impressions and 3,823 swipe-ups (the average rate is .35%, so we significantly outperformed the benchmark with a 1.39% swipe-up rate).

For Instagram, we created a filter in Meta Spark AR; utilized a Photoshop face mesh to let visitors manually draw on bronzer and blush and another to articulate the “glow” with sheen; and used the patch editor to bring in the slider element so they could adjust intensity. Here too, the outcomes were healthy — with 455 impressions and 907 opens.

In addition, the Mystic Tan Facebook page experienced 1,861,431 impressions for 8,547 clicks and a CTR average of 2.77%, while Norvell’s Facebook logged 458,674 impressions for 9,124 clicks and a CTR average of 2%. Streaming audio contributed 257,400 impressions for 872 clicks, together with 260,100 more impressions for 227 clicks through our retargeting efforts.

Innis Maggiore enhanced an already-strong program with influencer marketing, signing three influencers, using the Julius media platform, and featuring an influencer ad on TikTok. This aspect of the promotion brought 2,084,316 impressions and 15,518 clicks.

Overall, Innis Maggiore social media brought in more than 50% of the total traffic for the campaign.

Everything we created and deployed led toward a dedicated National Spray Tanning Day landing page for potential customers to locate participating salons and spas in their state, answer the most common questions, and sign up for a spray tanning newsletter.

The landing page had 22,200 visits and was successful in providing the users with an easy locator and will be used for future campaign as more updates, images, and features are added.

Stark County Health Department

Amongst many services provided to our community, the Stark County Health Department offers two home visiting programs which provide free and confidential support services for pregnant mothers, as well as moms with infants under the age of one.

One is called THRIVE Home Visiting, which consists of a community health worker making monthly visits at the home or another place of the parent’s choice. They assist in connecting the person with resources such as access to transportation, health insurance, prenatal care, housing, crisis services, counseling services, items to prepare for the baby’s arrival, and help with early education for the baby.

The second is called Moms & Babies First, Ohio’s Black Infant Vitality Program. It consists of outreach services and health education for pregnant, African American mothers in Stark County. This is especially crucial because African Americans in Stark County have an infant mortality rate more than double that of Caucasians.

As Stark County’s leading advertising agency, and sharing the same hometown of Canton, Ohio, Innis Maggiore has helped our health department on a variety of endeavors. This particular project was to share the message that free resources are available on a confidential basis toward the theme that “every child deserves to celebrate their first birthday” with a campaign targeting statistically vulnerable African Americans.

We created a series of social media posts targeted to the defined audience, along with a take-one brochure. Together with the client, we felt that the best strategy would be a balance of urgency with hope, informing prospective and new mothers about the necessity to act due to the troubling realities. To set the stage for that balance, we picked out a particularly concerning statistic, followed directly by the staging of hope:

“9 babies out of 1,000 never reach their first birthday. We want them to hear ‘Happy Birthday’ sung by loved ones.”

We focused on the most important ways to help babies, including prenatal care, avoiding smoking and drinking while pregnant, and safe sleep practices for infants. Proof that the program has been helping further bolstered the hope side of the messaging — from a 35% decrease in infant deaths and 50% decrease in African American infant mortality to a 40% improvement in infant mortality racial disparity.

The social media campaign also provided a broader definition of help ready for those in the community, though all targeted mothers and expectant mothers.

These targeted Facebook ads also were created in a balance of concern with hope. We accomplished this by pairing provocative headlines in the form of a question — “FEEL ALONE?” | “CONFUSED ABOUT PRENATAL CARE?” | “NEED HELP?” | “DON’T KNOW WHERE TO TURN?” — with powerful photos depicting those in need. This was balanced by identifying the forms of help available (e.g., housing, food, clothing, and parenting classes; prenatal resources; infant mortality reduction programs; and healthy pregnancy assistance).

Arnold Funeral Homes

There is very little relevant differentiation in the funeral home industry. People generally don’t think of choosing a funeral home until someone dies. Promoting pre-planned funerals was identified as a way to reach out to people before the immediate need of a funeral, expanding the selling opportunity for the funeral home.

While most other funeral homes have this service available, no one was really owning the service in this market, giving Arnold Funeral Homes the opportunity to do so.

Pre-planned funerals are growing in use as an instrument that may be purchased in advance of transitional care (e.g., assisted living, skilled nursing care, etc.) from an individual’s assets with no penalty. Pre-planned funerals lock in a set price for the buyer and provide guaranteed income to the funeral home.

That all made sense. What didn’t make sense was anyone having an expectation of standing out from the rest of the industry when no one was willing to look or sound different. The entire category had become a cache of clichés, a place for advertising to die. Picture a calming sunset or a bad stock photo of an elderly couple with the same messages about handling your loved ones with dignity.

Thinking that if we truly wanted our client to stand out and get people to notice and think about pre-planning, we knew it had to be more real. Real people have real personalities, unique and quirky and fun and spirited. Real characters have idiosyncrasies, with their own hobbies and interests and obsessions. Let’s make a campaign that reflects that — and doesn’t apologize for being different.

Starting with the lowest budget and the lowest risk, social media was the first step into new waters. Innis Maggiore decided to create a series of Facebook concepts with a distinct voice and tone more lighthearted and edgy. Moving away from the traditional and expected, we wrote and designed a trio of ads that used photos of people who looked like real characters rather than clichés.

The main theme was, “It’s your funeral.” We recognized that it was pushing things a bit, but felt it was the right direction because of its built-in double meaning. Of course, it’s a standard phrase in the vernacular, but it also communicated the idea that Arnold would plan a style of service that reflects your desires and personalities. Examples given were: “Pink, sparkly pajamas. A room full of daisies. Tea and cookies for the guests.”

The overall messaging was not for shock value, but to set up legitimate copy points and a call to action, “Shouldn't your final wishes be your wishes? Schedule your funeral pre-planning meeting with us today! After all, it's your funeral!”

After the initial success of the original limited campaign, and without any objections to the tone, we extended the “It’s your funeral” Facebook ads with new billboards complemented with a targeted geofencing digital strategy. The creative also rotated on Facebook to match the billboard creative. Using the geofenced Facebook campaign, we retargeted drivers up to 30 days after they passed a billboard, resulting in an increase in brand awareness — which also made sense because retargeted users are 70% more likely to convert compared to cold audiences (pardon the pun).

All made possible because Innis Maggiore didn’t want to settle for the safe or follow the crowd.

Once the initial Facebook campaign garnered a positive response (reaching more than 45,000 Facebook users, generating over 3,000 clicks to the website, and a click-through rate higher than the industry benchmark), the client was willing to add a more expensive and higher-visibility outdoor campaign which used parenthetical examples of the types of funerals possible: (even a biker parade), (even pink pajamas), (even a string quartet).