Communicating unique character for a fast casual brand

Erik’s DeliCafé marketing & advertising creative

Throughout 2019, Vigor embarked on a character-driven journey with Erik’s DeliCafé. The goal was to continue to align the brand with their purpose, “with character.” Additionally, the brand engaged in paid media advertising for the first time in years opening the opportunity to tell the Erik’s story while attracting Patrons past, present, and future.

Location

San Jose, California

Year Completed

2019

Team Size

vigor 7 / Client 4

Services

Brand Strategy, Narrative, Naming, Identity Design, Uniforming, Brand Activation, Marketing Strategy, Campaign Creative, Marketing Management, Social Media, Web Development

Building character for the food and 'tude

Erik’s was born with character, but hadn’t quite carried it through the advertising and marketing. What better way to display character to the world than to characterize the food itself?

We created a year-long series of character-driven advertising campaigns that played up the product and unique attitude of the brand and product itself. The creative spanned multiple media and channels from on-premise activations through paid digital media. The paid media channels included YouTube preroll, Spotify ads, paid social, and display.

Characters on the move

On-premise, activations broke up the monotony of multiple touchpoints with two creative directions: one that was character-focused, the other product-focused. In addition, we applied this approach to the display advertising initiatives to get a full suite of data for future optimizations.

Combined with email marketing, and paid social media on Facebook and Instagram, the Made with Character campaign took hold and resulted in fantastic metrics for the brand. Needless to say, these characters are on the move!

Results

The character-based campaign helped position Erik’s DeliCafé as an approachable, quirky, fun brand that was equally as great for young families as it was for the older generations.

Each character added to an ever-building momentum from campaign to campaign. The result was increases in awareness, traffic, and sales.

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