The Story
A doughball of a problem
When Hans Schrei landed in Austin, Texas the plan was to set up a bakery named Wunderkeks in the heart of the food destination. Maybe one day people would visit from all over the U.S. and seek out his store. He brought capital, he brought energy, he brought expertise. Schrei was ready to bake the best cookies ever. What Schrei did not expect was a pandemic-level obstruction to his storefront strategy.
At the beginning of 2020, Wunderkeks was ready to reach thousands of new customers at the SXSW Conference and Music Festival. With 10 staff hired, assets converted, and 25,000 cookies ready to bake, Schrei was ready to launch when a novel coronavirus erupted causing the world he knew to shut down. The festival was cancelled. What would happen to Wunderkeks now with 25,000 cookies and no one to buy them? Everything was on the line for the bakery.
Famine to Feast
For a while Wunderkeks regained its footing. Celebrity endorser Busy Philipps posted about the massive cookie problem. Next morning the team woke to 500 orders waiting to be fulfilled. Temporarily relieved, Schrei realized that his company’s future lay online, especially during the era of COVID-19.
Growth and Moderation
The Wunderkeks challenge was two-part: how to quickly grow the business online and how to control that growth. Growth was critical but not at a pace where they couldn’t deliver each order of fresh cookies in a timely manner. In addition, going viral had saved Wunderkeks once but now it needed a long-term online strategy to reach America’s cookie lovers. “Just because you have a few data points, you think it’s going to be easy to place an ad,” Schrei explains, “I pride myself on figuring things out but Facebook business advertising is confusing. It’s such a rich, sophisticated tool and it’s a full-time job just to deal with it,” he says. Wunderkeks needed an algorithm rainmaker to abruptly shift its channel focus online. But how do you develop a sales funnel from scratch that brings in enough profit and still focuses on reaching a lot of new customers? Too many sales and the small business may not cope, as learned when the orders flooded Schrei’s kitchen after a single tweet. Not enough well-timed and well-targeted advertising and promotion; product would sit. This balancing act required genuine online marketing expertise.
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The Goal
Scale the Wunderkeks brand, convert new awareness to sales and harness the power of cookie fandom. Without getting overwhelmed. And do it all online.
The Solution: No Surprises
Enter UniqueAnd; experienced Facebook and Instagram advertising strategists and implementors. Schrei told UniqueAnd owner, Brett Williams, “I'll be comfortable spending money on online advertising if I know we can reach 250 packages a day.” UniqueAnd’s strategic ad management was exactly what the company needed. The new goal took the team four days to hit. “With UniqueAnd I heard, This is the strategy, we're going to follow the strategy, and try to stick to it, because we think it’s going to work.’ And we have. And the strategy has worked. So, we’ve been very happy with the UniqueAnd approach,” says Schrei. “One of UniqueAnd’s key strengths is analysis. When I ask questions, they are welcomed and the conversation is fruitful.” UniqueAnd helped Wunderkeks build a digital presence that converted their business to ecommerce quickly yet managed orders to ensure sustainable growth was possible for the company.
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Intangibles and Data Expertise
For Wunderkeks, the level of success that came from working with UniqueAnd goes way beyond the list of services provided. Schrei also credits his company’s phenomenal online success to these elements where UniqueAnd really delivers: Team: “Brett is very good at letting each of his team members own their area of expertise. I know which person to direct each question and I really feel confident that they are the expert. Be honest, how many times are you in a zoom meeting and you wonder, ‘Why are those other people here?’ The UniqueAnd team really own different areas. I like that.” Deep Analytics Knowledge: “Brett is very analytic,” explains Schrei, “and I'm the same way so I really enjoy the explanations we get. I keep asking questions and he’s like, ‘Yeah, I'm glad you're asking because I have these explanations…’” “Working with UniqueAnd has been an education in how social media advertising works – you can take advantage of the way they work – if you're willing to learn and willing to nurture your strategic thinking, it's so worth it. I've been really enjoying this collaboration.”
Clarity and Trust:
UniqueAnd provides precise and regular updates. The team is qualified and know their specialty deeply. As a result, Wunderkeks consistently has a clear picture of what is being done to help the brand, “Brett’s clarity and focus on strategy is really helpful because we’re working with a big budget; there’s a lot of money involved in selling and shipping thousands of cookies every day and you have to be comfortable with who is managing that flow.” “UniqueAnd should be promoting how good they are because you know what? In this particular environment, in this digital marketing world they work in, there's so much snake oil. So much. On the contrary, with UniqueAnd it's like, Wow! Had I known how good they were going to be at what they do; I wouldn't have hesitated for a second.” Wunderkeks has decided that realistically 500 packages per day is the limit of what it can handle. And UniqueAnd has delivered again.