You can check out our process here, but in case you want a little more (and why wouldn’t you? I’ve been blessed with the gift of words), let me break it down. We say it’s five steps, but things are actually a bit more complicated than that.
Step 1: Gather the crew. This usually begins with somebody shouting, “Gemba team, assemble!”
Step 2: Ask a “question of the day” to get things rolling. This could be anything from “If you could only eat one kind of potato chip forever, what would it be?” to “Who is your most embarrassing celebrity crush?” We learn a lot about each other this way. Sometimes too much.
Step 3: Eat snacks.
Step 4: Talk about the snacks.
Step 5: Pool our creative genius. We may look like we’re just a bunch of artists, writers, business developers, account coordinators, and client service wizards, but between us, we also know a lot about lifting heavy things, officiating marriages, eating cake, running marathons, and spending four months in a vehicle shaped like a Hershey’s Kiss. Don’t we sound cool? Check out our sweet, sweet bios to see just how cool.
Step 6: Brainstorm ways to solve your business challenges by developing strategic programs. Our brainstorm sessions are like a beacon of bright creative light in a dense, uninspiring fog. Sometimes there’s Play-Doh.
Step 7: Bring your brand to life. No big deal. We’re a farm-to-table company and everything is manufactured 100% in-house, so when it’s time to get the production team involved, they’re literally like a ten-second walk that way. (Our vending machines, on the other hand, are more like twenty seconds. If I want potato chips I actually I have to round more than one corner.)
Step 8: Flawless execution. And this is the good kind of execution, not the “oh shit I’m in revolutionary France and things are getting real” type of execution.
Step 9: Measure your success. We’ll throw some fancy metrics your way, like in-market sales, net promoter score, samples distributed, number of impressions, number of interactions, and ROI. But we also know that success looks different to everybody, so we’ll be sure to let you know how you did no matter which way you measure it.
Step 10: We did it. You did it. High-fives all around.
Step 11: Repeat steps 1-10 ad infinitum. Lather, rinse, repeat.