I recently had the opportunity to attend the Business Marketing Association Colorado Gold Key Awards. Birko and our rebranding efforts were the subject of one of the Gold Medal award-winning campaigns and it helped me realize just how important it is to have targeted and dedicated partners in this area.
A year and a half ago we recognized that although most of our core markets knew who Birko was, they didn’t necessarily know the breadth of our capabilities. In fact, when we would trot out the statistics from a national publication that rated sanitation chemical companies and Birko was ranked in the top third immediately behind a couple of multi-billion dollar companies, we received one of two responses: “Of course, we knew that,” or, “I didn’t know you were so good at sanitation.” Opposite ends of the spectrum.
This helped us recognize that we needed to tell the greater world about the Birko story. To accomplish this, we went through a very exhaustive search for the right firm that would be committed to Birko and help us to properly communicate this message. We recognized that Birko’s employees are phenomenal at assisting our customers in optimizing their food safety and chemical use, but we are not specialists at marketing. Therefore, Birko needed a partner that could help us communicate the huge benefits our employees and chemistry bring to our customers each day. This could only happen through a collaborative partnership. In the end, we chose The Creative Alliance out of Boulder.
I must confess that each company we interviewed had wonderful PowerPoint presentations and video clips as well as a very long list of successful clients. Each one eloquently discussed how they would be “our partner.” Yet only one company convinced us that they would truly be our partner and always have Birko’s best interest at heart.
As a result, a year and a half later after significant effort, long hours and many, many meetings and sessions, the efforts The Creative Alliance have put into marketing Birko in the right way are evidenced in the fact that they won the Gold Medal (top honors) at the BMA.
This is a true partnership – Thanks Bob, Jenny and the entire TCA team!
