The best advertising
welcome to guesthouse.
Hello, Ken’s Foods.
You’re sorting through dozens of eager pitches right now. Thanks for finding ours.
We’re Guesthouse. We keep things simple.
We’ve done famous work for some huge brands, and left big agency life to help brands get to great work, quickly.
Ken’s Foods couldn’t be more exactly who we had in mind. In fact, we were shooting delicious BBQ footage for a Jim ‘N Nicks commercial when we got your invite. We live for two things – doing advertising people actually enjoy, and using the money to gobble as much pulled pork, ribs, brisket, and tacos as we can.
Your brief described us to a tee. We specialize in working alongside in-house teams as a true partner, concepting creative content, and then producing it ourselves with our own commercial director to get it done right, and quickly. No handoffs. Our media team includes our own extremely accomplished Guesthouse media strategist, with decades of food experience across Chick-fil-A, Checkers & Rally’s, Burger King, Kraft, and Olive Garden. We partner with a like-minded media agency called Triunion Marketing for buying, measurement, optimization and performance marketing. (We work seamlessly across 3 brands together - Citizens Trust Bank, GreyStone Power, and the Atlanta Vibe.)
We’re currently doing the kind of collaborative, effective work for great brands like yours, including Every Man Jack and Magic Spoon Cereal. You can read all about it in Adweek.
Our experience includes McCormick brands including French’s, Stubb’s, Frank’s Red Hot, and Cholula, as well as Kraft, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi. We’ve done work for Checkers & Rally’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, Torchy’s Tacos, Chick-fil-A, Burger King, KFC, Mellow Mushroom Pizza, Five Guys, Miller’s Ale House, LongHorn Steakhouse, and many more.
Take a look at some of our work in your category, and we hope to chat and collaborate soon!
SOME CURRENT CLIENTS
R E M I N D E R
EVERYONE HATES advertising.
BUT THEY LOVE INTERESTING THINGS.
LET’S MAKE INTERESTING THINGS TOGETHER.
SAUCY SAUCE-NESS
We worked on French’s for years. They wanted to show that they’re the basis of American food culture. We created Not From France to prove just how American French’s is, despite the name.
FRENCH’S MUSTARD
Mustard is just not something people often talk about. So to drum up excitement, we created an unignorably controversial treat. What followed was a lot of social love, PR, sales, and copycats. In fact, it kicked off the “weird-food collab” trend in social.
STUBB’S BBQ SAUCE
C. B. Stubblefield loved two things - great barbeque, and great music. We created the campaign that showed the difference in his sauce. It’s made with music. The brand platform continues today.
Melinda’s HOT SAUCE
We helped Melinda’s get more shelf space and retail placements by creating their first brand campaign. We wanted to show that Melinda’s makes any food exciting. It was super effective, helping Melinda’s get into Kroger, and break into the top 10 hot sauce rankings. WAKE THE FOOD UP!
Our strategy and media team saw that there was a white space in the category that is all about heat, to talk about the perfect balance of flavor AND heat. We came up with Melinda’s current brand platform, Set Your Mouth on Flavor. The new campaign has helped them see a 900% increase in bottles sold year over year.
FOOD FOOD FOOD (AND DRINKS TOO)
The entire Guesthouse team, from strategy to media to creative, helped Checkers & Rally's tap into an insight that was a game changer for their business. It started with a deep understanding of our target who we identified as Fast Foodies. The connoisseurs of fast food and good deals. 'Fast Foodie' was embraced at every level by the entire system: from the tone of voice of the communications, to on-lot and to every bag and cup we printed. It also influenced our media decisions using a rich mix of video, social and content programs that resulted in cultural resonance, franchisee satisfaction, and growth.
CHECKERS & RALLY’S
BEYOND MEAT
With Beyond Meat, suddenly steak is good for you. But don’t overthink it! This integrated campaign starring Rizwan Manjani and the voice of Chris Parnell helped Beyond dramatize the goodness of steak that isn’t steak but is a lot like steak.
COCA-COLA
We worked on Coca-Cola for over a decade, from big brand work to shopper marketing. Here a few of our favorites, where we helped the drink look delicious, while showing how it brings people together. This spot took place at Six Flags, was one of Ad Age’s Ads of the Year.
Summer is huge for Coke. It’s when they try to show teens that Coke isn’t for their parents, it’s for them. We did their entire summer campaign from national TV to shopper marketing.
How do you get people excited about the 6th summer of names on bottles of Coke? We created a unique song and social video for every name. All 1,000 of them. This campaign won every advertising award in the world, including Cannes Lions, One Show, & Effies.
FIVE GUYS
We shot Five Guys’ first ever brand campaign. We wanted to show that they’re amazing at burgers. Not so much talking about themselves.
MELLOW MUSHROOM PIZZA
Mellow Mushroom is a pizza place with a laid-back hippie mentality and a stoned mushroom for a mascot. To get more followers on Twitter, we told people if you follow us, we'll follow you. We didn't mention we'd be using your social info to do it in real life, in the company's creepy mushroom costumes. The campaign was featured in the New York Times, named one of Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 3 Marketing Masterworks," and for years Twitter used it as an example of how best to use Twitter.
Mitch and Wes have worked as a creative team and executive creative directors at top agencies across the country. Their work has a way of getting talked about in the press and social, earning many millions in free media, winning global creative awards you probably don’t care about, and global effectiveness awards you might. They’re most proud of the results they’ve helped their clients achieve, and the excitement it can create in an organization. They worked for over a decade with Jeff Quick, who after years at big agencies around the globe running brands like Nestle Waters, Dentyne, and Checkers & Rally’s, is now head of brand growth and strategy.
Wes Whitener, Mitch Bennett, and Jeff Quick, partners
Marnie Joseph, sauce lover
With a 25-year career in media strategy and activation, Marnie Joseph brings a deep well of experience in building integrated campaigns that make brands unforgettable. She's developed strategy for household names like Chick-fil-A, General Motors, and Comcast, developing custom media plans that drive business results.
With a proven track record across both traditional and digital channels, Marnie has overseen campaigns with media budgets as high as $500 million annually. Her work on Chick-fil-A’s Smokehouse BBQ Bacon Sandwich launch, and Comcast’s “A Holiday Reunion” spot (featuring E.T. and becoming the #1 trending video Globally on YouTube), showcase her ability to place great creative work in smart media placements.
She was part of our team that did the Checkers & Rally’s Fast Foodies work, and we’ve worked together for over a decade.
She’ll lead our Guesthouse media team in partnership with Triunion Marketing as we plan, buy, measure, and optimize the campaign.
Guesthouse has shot campaigns for brands like Five Guys, Checkers & Rally’s, Magic Spoon, Citizens Trust Bank, and Blue Cross Blue Shield. The same people shaping the work with you bring it to life as well. No handoffs, nothing lost in translation from kickoff to going live. Our Guesthouse roster also includes great agency producers and experienced line producers to make sure the job goes off without a hitch.
(We’re anti-hitch.)
Thanks for looking.
We literally built Guesthouse to help brands like Ken’s Sauces do big, bold creative in a smarter, more nimble way, working collaboratively with you and your team. Amazingly, in the exact way you described in your brief. As high-level creatives at perennial agencies-of-the-year, we are the people agencies hire to do this exact kind of work, and then charge much much more to do it. We’d love to help you get everything you need to successfully launch the brand.
Here’s to meat tasting as good as humanly possible, and hot sauce to raise the bar again.
-Guesthouse
