Media Manager Marketplace makes radio/TV cost effective for retail brands – press release

Rochester, MN – Media Manager, the 10-year-old marketing agency that handles the national media placement for brands like X-Chair, 4Patriots, and Navage, has recently launched a new division, Media Manager Marketplace, that will focus on helping brands that are looking to grow both their online and traditional “brick-and-mortar” retail sales through cost-effective offline advertising.

“When we started the agency, we were really focused on performance marketing and traditional direct response, and while that’s still the primary focus of the parent agency, we’ve seen that applying the same media purchasing strategies can be extremely beneficial for products at retail looking for advertising support,” says Media Manager founder and CEO, Brian Bos.

In 2021, Cleveland-based RhinoSystems Inc, engaged Media Manager for their national radio marketing needs.  “Now they spend more on radio than any other medium,” explains Media Manager Marketplace president, Buck Robinson, “and that’s due in large part to the way that we secure that radio placement.  We buy it a lot smarter than a typical brand agency would, allowing the client’s dollars to go significantly farther and providing substantially more ‘bang for the buck.’”

“Since partnering with Media Manager for radio advertising, our retail business has grown at a 15% compound annual growth rate, “says Elyse Morlan, Retail Operations Manager for RhinoSystems. “We have seen a definite correlation between spend on radio advertising and sales at retail.  Radio advertising is helping drive consumer awareness, making brick-and-mortar retail stores destination spots for consumers looking to purchase our product. And radio is not only driving consumer awareness, but also driving awareness for key decision-makers at retail stores!  Just last week I was meeting with a category manager of a well-known grocery chain and as soon as he walked into the meeting room he exclaimed ‘I hear your radio spot all of the time!  I love all of the advertising you guys do’”.

In late 2022, the North American division of International nutritional company, New Nordic, retained Media Manager to help them penetrate the U.S. market more effectively. Based in Montreal, New Nordic had made some initial headway into the U.S. retail market, but they needed media support to help improve sales. Robinson explains, “when we first engaged with New Nordic, print was their primary medium of advertising. Our agency has a deep history in print, so we were able to help them in that regard, but we also knew that their products would be well suited to both radio and television.  We were very confident that radio, especially, would provide an ideal platform for them to gain national exposure to really impact retail traffic. Thankfully they were willing to go along with our recommendation and give radio a try, and the outcome has been a real game changer for the campaign as a whole. Now New Nordic almost exclusively uses radio and television advertising to promote over a dozen of their products, both in the U.S. and Canada, with Media Manager Marketplace handling all media purchasing in both countries.”

Jan Petersen, General Manager of New Nordic North America, says, “We have worked with MMM for a year now and we are extremely pleased with their performance. Media Manager Marketplace is a great group of people to work with, and they have boosted our sales nicely, using their knowledge of media, their experience in buying and not least their understanding of what sells a product. On Amazon.com alone, we saw our best-selling product almost double in sales, in less than 6 months.”

“After seeing the kind of dramatic impact that our approach to offline media buying has had for two different clients across numerous campaigns, we knew that we had something special that would benefit hundreds of retail consumer products, so we decided that we needed to give that division its own focus and identity,” CEO Bos explains.

“Too many emerging brands waste their precious marketing budgets using the wrong media mix simply because of the ‘hype’ associated with outlets like social media, influencers, or other flavors of the day,” Robinson says, “but when it comes to driving massive national reach and consumer impressions, radio and television are still extremely effective, both in terms of value and trust by the target audience. But there’s your standard radio and TV buying, and then there’s OUR way of buying those channels, and no one is going to make those dollars work harder, or go farther, than MMM.”

Media Manager Marketplace is currently interviewing prospective clients in hopes of adding 2 or 3 new campaigns in 2024. “We are still being selective because we want to continue our unbroken chain of success with these kinds of campaigns,” says Robinson, “but we’ve also dedicated resources and bandwidth to help grow this division as aggressively as possible in 2024 and beyond.”

CEO Brian Bos explains, “The ideal candidate for MMM is a company that is looking to either grow their online sales through a platform like Amazon, or perhaps they are looking to make the jump from online sales to brick-and-mortar – once they are committed to that kind of sales strategy, we can come in and help them make sure that they invest their marketing dollars wisely to achieve immediate traction. We’ve seen and heard too many examples of companies that blow through their entire marketing budget without any impact on retail sales. We know our approach is going to help companies move the needle, but we can’t help them if they come to us too late, so we really want to connect with brands at the beginning so that we can help them get established and scale their business.”

Interested companies should contact Media Manager Marketplace by emailing Buck Robinson at [email protected]