Dive Brief:
- Cheerwine, a family-owned soft drink company based in Salisbury, NC, is seeking help from creative types across the country as it designs a new marketing campaign for its eponymous soda.
- The soft drink is seeking national distribution by 2017, and is looking beyond the regional marketing and advertising companies it has worked with in the past. The company recently ended a relationship with Charlotte-based ad agency, Boone Oakley.
- Cheerwine says it received more than 1,000 replies to its call for help, and is now considering 60 different ideas.
Dive Insight:
We're fond enough of Cheerwine that we put it in our feature on 5 food brands that would make any Easterner nostalgic. But soda may be the most competitive space in the entire food and beverage industry. And even some of the biggest players in the game are worried about sales (take the recent announcement from Coca-Cola Enterprises, for example).
Given that, Cheerwine's national ambitions won't be easily achieved. And the soft-drink company is wise to cast a wide net when seeking help.