From traditional and online grocery, to Hispanic, natural & organic, hybrid, price impact and more: The Case for Experience.

In his book, The Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell lays out what he calls the 10,000 Hour Rule. According to his research, any kind of cognitively complex field requires at least 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery. That’s 4 hours a day for ten years, roughly. Think Tiger Woods and Bill Gates. 

At HEILBrice, our particular area of mastery is food—we are interdisciplinary students of how it’s sold at retail supermarkets and online, and how it’s packaged and presented in digital and traditional media. We have deliberately sought to improve and evolve our knowledge over the last—well, let’s just say MORE than—10,000 hours. Today, we say with confidence that we have unmatched expertise selling food. Our particular style isn’t for everyone, but if you’ve made it this far, there’s a pretty good chance it’s perfect for you. We’re purpose-built for all the challenges of selling food at retail.

Here are some of the brands we’ve been proud to represent:

We’ve partnered with just about every kind of business that has a retail component—and that includes everything from pharmacy, to floor coverings, to an NBA franchise. We know for certain that supermarkets are the most complex and perilous.

It’s never been more true than it is today. New online and traditional competitors seem to pop up every week!

Our job is about establishing, maintaining and evolving your position so that customers are less likely to consider other alternatives. That’s very simple to say, very difficult to do.  At the end of day, we’re here to help you accomplish three things:

Build Sales • Increase Margins • Reduce Risk

There are three ways that we work with food retailers.

1.  EMBEDDED TEAM. HEILBrice is part of weekly sales and planning meetings with heavy involvement from our experienced Food Retail Team, including our Co-Founder.  Typically, we will have at least one, sometimes many more members of the HB team in your offices every business day. We are able to speed up time to market on key initiatives and reduce costs through a seamless integration with your in-house resources. In our experience, this is the model that has resulted in the fastest, most profound results for clients.
2. PARTNERSHIP. HEILBrice will serve as, what has been traditionally called, Agency of Record. We will be responsible for a set scope of work; typically including brand positioning and strategic planning, creative development and content creation for broadcast, online, social, print, point of sale and internal/investor communications.
3. PROJECTS. In select cases, we can be available to execute free-standing jobs. These may be around rebranding and positioning, and the creative development around a specific initiative or customer research. Availability to execute projects may be limited by competitive conflicts in the category.

Years ago, one of our clients required the entire office staff to show up every Saturday morning for a half-day of work. The good news? No one had to wear a tie. Thankfully, times have changed and today, if you want to wear a tie on Saturday, you go right ahead!

The point here is that we’ve formed our culture in the 24/7, you-say-jump, we-say-how-high world of retail. That has informed everything we do, from the tools we invest in to the people who join our team. People who come to us from traditional agencies are typically shocked at how much we can do in a short period of time.

We deliver Ideas The Build Business for supermarkets.

From ground up store re-imagining to crisis communications during labor unrest, to loyalty program launches and promotional development; from own brand product development to traditional television and radio; from enterprise-level web development to social media management to every possible aspect of in-store communication; from developing Hispanic vendor programs and advertising implementation, to all aspects of media and digital CRM platform development, we have handled every conceivable challenge that any food retailer is facing in today’s environment. We have even designed entire store interiors. That doesn’t mean that we draw from the same playbook over and over again—we remain passionate students of the business, and we’re committed to keeping our clients in front of the next curve on this very twisty road.

In order to stay relevant to customers and continue to earn their loyalty, what used to be called promotion is an important component of the grocery messaging mix.

But it’s not about the blunt-force weapon of the below-cost ad feature. Today, we help build and strengthen relationships by helping you establish the best position in your marketplace; tune into the wants and needs of your best customers—and when possible, we’ll even help you “fire” your worst customers—the ones who cost you money every time they walk in the door.

Building a supermarket brand that is exclusively anchored in price is not sustainable. You’re only as good as your last front page feature.

We can show you how to align with values of the customers who will be the most profitable and loyal; we’ll help you shape your offerings to better connect with them; and we’ll help you develop corporate giving strategies that are meaningful to customers and accretive to your bottom line.