The power of local businesses working together

Rachel Sankey

Staff

May 1, 2024

SHEBOYGAN FALLS – Businesses located in small towns don’t mean the work being done is by any means small.

In fact, it can be quite the opposite.

FifthColor, Megan Growt – director of integrated marketing – said is a perfect example of what it means to be small but mighty.

The full-service experiential marketing agency – located at 1500 Stedman Way in Sheboygan Falls – she said, has seen tremendous growth as of late, gaining big-name clients, such as Puma, Reebok and Carbliss.

“We’ve grown nearly 800% in the last five years,” Growt said.

The journey to FifthColor
Though the business didn’t officially become FifthColor until 2021, Growt said the owner’s history in the industry dates back more than 20 years.

“(Kelly and Justin Webb) came from McKinsey and Company‚ ” she said. “They bring with them a strong background in strategy and consulting.”

Long story short, Growt said, the Webbs were living in Chicago at that time but ended up back in Sheboygan in 2015 – Kelly’s hometown – and purchased Sun Graphics, a small printing company based in Plymouth.

“They had this vision of turning it into a full-service marketing agency,” she said. “They wanted to implement a lot of the brand strategy and the processes of McKinsey and Company (with) the clients (at Sun Graphics).”

This, Growt said, meant the addition of website development, marketing services, creative/content creation and more.

“It grew into a regional powerhouse,” she said.

Carbliss has been able to work with FifthColor’s creative team to create training material. Photo Courtesy of FifthColor

To further expand the company’s offerings, Growt said Sun Graphics acquired Franzen Graphics in late 2019, which forged “a dynamic partnership to redefine the industry landscape.”

The merger, she said, combined expertise in marketing strategy, creative design, web development and commercial print production to provide even more services to the business’s clientele.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early March 2020, Growt said it took a little while for everything to come together.

From there, she said, “we became FifthColor.”

“Now, we are that comprehensive, single-source solution,” she said. “Our slogan is ‘All the experts under one roof,’ and it’s true.”

The growth wasn’t done yet.

In 2023, FifthColor acquired long-time partner Event Solutions, which Growt said allowed for the full-service marketing agency to “see everything from start to finish.”

“We were already doing all of the print work, strategy and design for‚ events, but we weren’t executing the activations on-site,” she said. “(Now we execute) pre-planning and the installation on site.”

Service tiers
When FifthColor begins working with a new client, Growt said it’s suggested they work with the team up the ladder of the company’s services.

This, she said, means starting with strategy – or what the FifthColor team calls the foundation.

“It’s everything from a whole brand strategy, which is an in-depth analysis of what our client’s customers expect from a brand beginning with a focus on internal brand building,” she said.

For strategy services, Growt said FifthColor helps with consulting, targeting tactics, internal brand solutions, overall branding (think colors and logos) and BAV analysis – which provides an in-depth look at where the brand is in its lifecycle.

“We love when clients start with that because, at the end of that process, we know the client’s brand just as much – if not better – than they do,” she said. “We’re able to move into all the other service lines with an immense amount of knowledge.”

From there, Growt said clients can go in a few different directions in terms of services, but the preferred next move is marketing.

“We’re able to take the data and results found in our brand strategies and apply it to different marketing channels,” Erica Gollhardt, director of marketing, said. “Then those marketing channels have specific plans or strategies within it.”

Other strategies include email marketing, SEO (search engine optimization) and marketing.

FifthColor offers a variety of creative services, such as photography, videography and 3D animation. Photo Courtesy of FifthColor

Ashley Vogel, vice president of marketing, said FifthColor has a full team of creatives, such as photographers, videographers and those who do 3D modeling animation, which is another service available to clients.

The next rung on the ladder, Vogel said, is development.

The development team, she said, is in house, which is unique since “typically we’ve seen companies have outsource teams for development.”

Clients can receive help with UI/UX design, website maintenance, custom software development and more.

Vogel said FifthColor can also help with printing and signage, and uses a variety of substrates, from plastic, paper, wood, metal and glass to achieve anything from 3D activations to digital experiences.

The company’s focus on sustainability has also helped aid its customers on alternative solutions that lessen its environmental impact.

The final service FifthColor offers, Vogel said, is event solutions, which can range anywhere from activations, signage and fan engagement, to layout/management, live tasks and labor.

“Anything marketing-wise, we can tackle it,” she said.

A blissful partnership
About two years ago, Vogel said Adam and Amanda Kroener, the owners of Carbliss – a malt-less, carb-less and sugar-less cocktail company that got its start in Plymouth – reached out in search of a new agency.

“They were looking for a new agency partner where they could be down the road, (where) they could stop in and have face-to-face conversations and build a solid agency relationship,” she said. “They wanted to find a partner that could help them that’s also locally owned.”

Thus, Vogel said a partnership between FifthColor and Carbliss was born.

“One of the biggest pieces that was a draw to them, too, was we have commercial print (capabilities) on-site,” she said. “It’s a nice piece for them because we can handle everything marketing-wise, all the way through to what their displays look like and getting everything kitted and shipped out to different retail locations for them.”

Gollhardt said Carbliss continues to grow exponentially, and FifthColor continues to support its growth.

“They’re not just Wisconsin-known, they are all over the Midwest,” she said. “And continuing to expand strategically.”

When Carbliss first started with FifthColor, Vogel said the company was in about half of the states as they are in currently.

Now, Carbliss can be found here in Wisconsin, as well as in Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Louisiana and Arkansas.

Some of the projects Carbliss has worked on with FifthColor, Gollhardt said, include:

MLB Park partnership and sponsorship with the Milwaukee Brewers: All advertising, digital assets and social media were done by FifthColor
Nationwide summer and winter campaigns: To increase engagement, there were Carbliss merch giveaways during the summer and Carbliss-inspired recipes for the winter
Product launches: Carbliss launched a pineapple cocktail last year, a peach vodka cocktail this year, as well as a new margarita variety pack
“They want people to be engaged with their brand in a very natural way,” Gollhardt said. “We are posed with a challenge to meet their customers where they want to enjoy Carbliss, and it has been a pleasure to do.”

Carbliss, Vogel said, has been a great example of how a company can grow when looking to grow awareness and using a full-service experiential marketing agency, such as FifthColor.

“I think where they have a strong advantage is understanding the need to put investment into your brand and marketing so people understand who you are and why you should choose them,” she said. “The best partnerships we’ve had are the people who trust us – they trust the process, and they know it is a process. Carbliss is a great example of that.”

Gollhardt said FifthColor is an extension of Carbliss’ team.

“They definitely treat us as such,” she said.

Growt said that sometimes there is a stigma around the size and location of businesses and their capabilities.

FifthColor helped Carbliss in their partnership and sponsorship with the Milwaukee Brewers. All advertising and assets were created by the FifthColor team. Photo Courtesy of FifthColor

“We are fighting it all the time‚ ” she said. “People think you have to go to Milwaukee, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles for these services, and it’s not true.”

With growth at the forefront of both businesses’ mindsets, Gollhardt said their work has led to just that – growth.

“Midwesterners are iconically the hard-working type of population,” she said. “You can trust things are getting done‚ It is fulfilling, and we feel proud working with (Carbliss) and the partnership we continue to grow.”

AI and marketing
As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to become more prevalent in the marketing realm, Vogel said this has been the topic of many discussions within the FifthColor team.

“(We’ve been talking about) wanting to be on the right side of AI and leveraging it as a tool, especially when working for clients who are hiring us,” she said. “But at the same time, we also understand this is something that could disrupt and revolutionize what we see as marketing. How can we also be on the end of making it work for us and our clients?”

FifthColor, Vogel said, leverages AI as a research tool, a thought-starter and something to help the team build a foundation they can work off.

AI, she said, is also able to help the team with data management.

However, Gollhardt said it’s important to keep in mind that “AI will never replace that human connection.”

“It’s a great tool, but marketing is still (about) that human connection,” she said. “We’re understanding trends and consumer behavior and why people purchase the things they do‚ each person is different and behaves differently.”

Growt said AI shines a light on another benefit of working with a marketing agency.

“It’s on us to stay up to date with these tools‚ ” she said. “When you have one person at your company and their job is marketing, they have so much to do – that’s not on the forefront of their mind.”

At a class Growt and FifthColor’s CEO Justin Webb attended at Northwestern University in Chicago, Growt said they learned of the two reasons to use AI: efficiency and effectiveness.

“We’re a data-driven agency, so for us it’s about efficiency and effectiveness when it comes to data,” she said. “There are so many data tools we can leverage here as an agency. And like I said, when you work with an agency, it’s on us to create that efficiency for our clients.”

To learn more about FifthColor, visit fifthcolor.com.