BC Hot House Foods is getting back to its marketing roots in a way by bringing on BrandFX on a one-year contract.
BrandFX was one of four agencies shortlisted in a review for the 40-year-old grower-owned company that distributes its hot house vegetables across North America and Asia.
Mike Reed, president of BC Hot House Foods, said it’s the first time the company has worked with an agency since its last agency of record – Lanyon Phillips Partners, which merged with BBDO Vancouver in 1998. Tim Kelly, partner at the North Vancouver-based BrandFX, was a partner at Lanyon Phillips.
“It used to be that everything that was grown in a greenhouse had to be marketed through BC Hot House,” said Reed. “That changed in early 2000, so our volumes got smaller and, with that, so did our advertising and marketing budgets.”
Reed said that in recent years they’ve seen more growth with new and returning veggie growers joining the ranks.
“There’s a general feeling from the board that we have lagged behind some of our competitors on the look and feel of our packaging,” Reed said. “We are doing a lot more new value-added and specialty products and feel that we have to start making more noise.”
“We liked the fact that Tim’s group does a lot of work for produce companies like Zestfry, Oppenheimer and BC Tree Fruits.”
BrandFX will start work on the brand by refreshing its packaging and designing collateral marketing materials and a website, said Reed.
