Integrated marketing company’s strategic focus and model propels business growth
Integrated marketing company GYK Antler has continued its 2020 growth trajectory with three account wins within the financial services and consumer packaged goods categories. The company kicked off 2020 with a refined strategic focus and evolved business model, reinforcing GYK Antler’s position as a creative growth engine fueled by an entrepreneurial spirit. This momentum is reflective of the growth engine at work and a shared belief with these new clients that creativity is the ultimate brand and business advantage.
GYK Antler is proud to welcome the following three clients to its roster:
Sallie Mae – Based in Newark, DE, Sallie Mae is the leader in private student lending, providing financing and know-how to support access to college. Sallie Mae believes education and life-long learning, in all forms, helps people achieve great things. Staying rooted to this core belief, Sallie Mae has tapped GYK Antler to strategically redefine their brand positioning. As lead agency, GYK Antler will bring this new positioning to life through an integrated brand campaign, establishing a cohesive look and feel that will support all marketing assets.
Ocean Spray – Headquartered in Lakeville, MA, Ocean Spray is a farmer-owned cooperative founded in 1930 by three cranberry farmers. Today, Ocean Spray consists of 700 small family farms across the United States, Canada, and Chile, who have preserved the family farming way of life for generations. Just as their farmers have been innovating for 90 years, Ocean Spray is driving forward its health, wellness, and sustainability goals. GYK Antler is working with the Ocean Spray food team to reinvigorate the 25-year young Craisins® Dried Cranberry brand with a new advertising campaign, leaning into the cooperative’s dedication to the health of people and planet. The campaign is slated to launch in the early Fall.
brekki – A Carlsbad, CA-based company with a line of dairy-free, ready-to-eat Overnight Oats, brekki was founded in 2017 with the mission of providing people with a convenient, nutrient-dense meal option that tastes great and can be enjoyed during breakfast, lunch, dinner, or anytime in between. brekki was acquired in December 2019 by the executive team of Cedar’s Foods, the global leader in Mediterranean Foods, and has enlisted the help of GYK Antler to establish new branding for the company and its products, from packaging to digital content to branded merchandise, and develop an integrated marketing strategy to differentiate the brand amid a crowded and fast-moving overnight oats category.
“Our team could not be any more excited to be partnering with these truly great brands – and just all-around fantastic clients and good people,” said Managing Director Mark Battista. “GYK Antler has been making tremendous strides this year, leveling-up an already strong foundation of integrated thinking through the hiring of some excellent new talent and enhanced marketing services offerings. These wins are a testament of our people’s hard work and commitment to creating ownable, actionable and enduring ideas that ignite our clients’ brands and fuel business growth.”
These client wins, in addition to GYK Antler being named lead agency on the Wahlburgers business in Q1 2020, follow the appointments of two key executives to the company’s leadership team in the past year. Mark Battista joined the company last summer, bringing more than two decades of experience building impactful, insights-driven campaigns for leading brands across several highly awarded advertising agencies. Pam Hamlin, a veteran in the advertising industry and former CEO of Arnold Worldwide, was named President of GYK Antler in September 2019. In partnership with CEO Travis York, Hamlin and Battista have been propelling growth at GYK Antler, implementing a strategic plan to modernize the business, hire best-in-class talent and champion the belief that creativity is the ultimate brand and business advantage.
About GYK Antler
GYK Antler is a creative growth engine fueled by an entrepreneurial spirit. Established in 1975, this integrated marketing company of creative entrepreneurs embraces its clients’ challenges as its own and believes that creativity is the ultimate business advantage. To deliver on this belief, GYK Antler unleashes an integrated team of strategy, creative and media to create ownable, actionable and enduring ideas that ignite brands and fuel business growth. GYK Antler is proud to represent both emerging and established brands, including Cedar’s Hommus, New Hampshire Travel & Tourism, Ocean Spray, Wahlburgers, Baskin-Robbins, York Athletics, Dunkin’, Sallie Mae, Ken’s Foods, New Hampshire State Lottery, Timberland, ESPN and Sweet Baby Ray’s. A fiercely independent company, GYK Antler is headquartered in Manchester, NH, with an office in downtown Boston.