Storyboard: Summer Job
Marble Slab Creamery launches a new summer ad campaign as ice cream’s high season heats up.
By Margaret Littman, Contributing Editor -- Chain Leader, 8/1/2004
We all may scream for ice cream, but Ronald J. Hankamer would like to hear those cries a little more loudly this summer. That’s why Hankamer, president and CEO of the Marble Slab Creamery ice-cream chain, OK’d the launch of a $1 million TV ad campaign that began airing the last week of May.
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The Houston-based concept has used TV sparingly in its 21-year-old history, most recently in 1998. It has been focusing on more affordable billboards, radio and movie-screen ads instead. “This is the first time that we have put together a truly professionally done spot,” says Hankamer.
The time was right to begin a mass-media ad campaign. With 382 stores throughout much of the United States and Canada (all but one is franchised), Marble Slab plans to add 120 units this year and reach a total of 500 by the end of 2005.
The $55 million chain is one of the leaders in the competitive, super-premium ice-cream market, with rivals Cold Stone Creamery and Maggie Moo’s Ice Cream and Treatery. The ice cream is not packaged for off-site retail sales, so customers must come in to try the Marble Slab formula of spreading the 14 percent butterfat ice cream on a frozen marble slab; mixing in fruits, nuts and candies; and then folding it into a cone or cup. But, adds Hankamer, “We have a lot of offers that our competitors don’t, besides super premium. We have Atkins low-carb ice cream, frozen yogurt, and we want to attempt to continue to get people in our stores.”
Impulse Purchases
The objectives of the new campaign are as simple as the pleasures of an ice-cream cone on a hot summer evening: increase frequency of current customers and drive trial by new customers. “We want people to sample our product. We believe it is superior to our competition,” Hankamer says.
The new TV ads make that opinion abundantly clear. Created by STANANDLOU Marketing and Advertising, Marble Slab’s ad agency for the past six years, the branding campaign skewers a fictional competitor called Wooden Board Creamery. By watching Wooden Board’s sales spiel, consumers learn about Marble Slab’s points of difference, including that frozen marble slab on which ice cream is mixed and fresh ingredients for mix-ins, waffle cones and toppings like hot fudge.
The Wooden Board spot, which was created in 30-, 15- and 10-second versions, features a mother and her son asking questions about the Wooden Board ice-cream treats in comparison to Marble Slab’s. An inept employee of the fictional ice-cream stand touts offerings that sound similar to Marble Slab’s but have fatal flaws, such as splinters in the ice cream from the wood board and hot fudge that must be warmed with a blowtorch.
The casting is reflective of the audience the chain wants to reach: customers 25 to 49 years old, including families with young children. The spots are airing on network television on weekend mornings and on cable stations, ranging from the Discovery Channel to Nick at Nite and Lifetime, Wednesday through Sunday evenings.
“Recency is the buying theory when it comes to ice cream,” explains Tammy Guest, vice president and lead account executive on the Marble Slab account at STANANDLOU. “Most of the ice-cream buys are compressed into those days.”
Marble Slab’s media buys are structured to air at times when it makes sense for a viewer to head out for an impulse ice-cream purchase. The ads are airing in approximately 75 percent of Marble Slab Creamery’s markets, including Houston, Dallas and Nashville, Tenn. Franchisees pay 2 percent of gross sales into an ad fund to finance the efforts.
Summer’s End
While the Wooden Board spot is designed to tempt viewers during ice cream’s high season, Guest says STANANDLOU has developed elements of the summer ad campaign to help sustain it through the fall and winter and to help keep the campaign timely. Marble Slab’s previous campaign ran for two years, so Guest is confident. “We are looking to get some longevity out of this,” she says.
The agency plans to continue to use the new tagline, “The one. The only. The original,” as it expands the campaign throughout the year.
In the shorter term, specialty products in the off season such as pumpkin and coffee-flavored ice cream are ripe for limited-time promotions, which will be backed by radio ads and in-store displays. The chain will also send the new ice-cream flavors out to morning TV news anchors and radio DJs. That’s a tactic sure to have the personalities screaming for ice cream.
| “Wooden Board Creamery” Length: 30 seconds |
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| 1. Voice-over: Not just anyone can make ice cream like Marble Slab Creamery. | 2. Mom: Your ice cream is fresh, right? Ice-cream vendor: Sure... I mix it up here on my wooden board. |
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| 3. Boy: Do you have mix-ins? Vendor: You got it. Mom: How about waffle cones? |
4. Voice-over: Nothing compares to Marble Slab Creamery’s super-premium ice cream. |
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| 5. We make it fresh daily. | 6. Add your favorite mix-ins. |
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| 7. And serve it up in a freshly baked waffle cone. | 8. Marble Slab Creamery. Ice-cream vendor: You want hot fudge, too? |
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