Major Tom

Mark Anthony Group is a family-owned business that pioneered high-end winemaking in BC’s Okanagan Valley. It was founded in 1972 and is the force behind iconic brands like White Claw Hard Seltzer, Mission Hill, and Cedar Creek. Their internationally recognized businesses include Artisan Wine Shop (with a collection of small-batch, organic wines from across BC), Red Barn Winery (offering wines from Jagged Rock Vineyard), and Liquidity Wines in the heart of Okanagan Falls.

The Challenge

With their contract expiring, the Mark Anthony Group had just four months to migrate the sites for not one but three of their smaller wine brands (Artisan Wine Shop, Red Barn Winery, and Liquidity Wines), moving them from ecomm provider Wine Direct to the more robust Commerce7. A tight timeline and limited budget meant they needed an efficient plan to launch the new sites — while still delivering on the level of polish and refinement expected from each winery.

Major Tom‘s Approach

The project demanded flexibility as we worked to adapt the proven process behind other Mark Anthony Group sites to better design, develop, and migrate three brands in tandem. Hitting our deadline would mean finding common elements and efficiencies across all three websites — helping our teams work faster while maintaining the refined look and feel of each winery’s unique brand. A rolling approach would move each site, in turn, from design to front end dev, allowing for continuous, phased work across our teams. We dubbed this process “Lift and Shift.”

Our team began by digging into the existing sites, auditing their structure and content to identify commonalities and differences before wireframing core components. This was our foundation for all future content. We then built a shared winery theme that could be reused to streamline each site’s development while still supporting a unique design system for each winery. Beyond just swapping colours and fonts, design team used the theme to build truly unique brand experiences that you’d struggle to recognize as sharing the same backend.

About GO! Solutions

Go! Solutions is a premium pet food brand dedicated to providing tailored nutrition for dogs and cats. Their recipes are crafted by pet nutrition experts to address specific dietary needs, ensuring pets receive balanced and nutrient-dense meals. Go! Solutions offers a variety of recipes, including those for skin and coat health, food sensitivities, digestion and weight management. The products can be found in-store at pet specialty stores across North America and online, including Amazon.com. They came to Major Tom to ensure a successful launch for their latest product: tailored recipes to help support Weight Management, Joint Care, and Digestion.

The Challenge

The pet food industry is highly competitive. Although Go! Solutions is a rising star, it faces stiff competition from over 20 other brands, including both local premium and large global brands. These competitors benefit from larger media budgets and greater brand recognition.

This made it challenging for Go! Solutions to increase awareness and connect with its target audience for its specialized dietary products.

Our Approach

Since we couldn’t match competitor media spend, we had to outsmart them. That meant targeting pet parents at critical moments in their animal’s life: right when they first adopted them, brought them home for the first time, or recently visited a veterinarian

The Major Tom team used advanced in-platform targeting capabilities to deliver Go! Solutions videos featuring pets shedding, playing, or farting to connect with owners with the exact right content at the exact right time. It was a strategy engineered to tug at heartstrings to drive awareness and purchase.

The Results

Connecting with pet owners through highly targeted ads paid off:

• 2.5x HIGHER THAN THE INDUSTRY AVERAGE CTR (CLICK THROUGH RATE)
• 3x HIGHER THAN THE INDUSTRY AVERAGE DISPLAY ADS ENGAGEMENT RATE
• 25% HIGHER THAN THE INDUSTRY AVERAGE WEBSITE CONVERSION RATE

Corix is a leading North American thermal energy company that delivers safe, cost-effective, and sustainable district energy services. With decades of experience in utility development, ownership, and operations, Corix services everything from single-site operations to master-planned communities and redevelopments to entire city-scale downtown areas.

The Challenge

On April 1, 2024, SouthWest Water acquired Corix’s water and wastewater divisions. This left Corix’s thermal energy division to find its own way in the world, which provided opportunities to redefine the Corix brand to meet its current needs and future aspirations to be North America’s leader in thermal energy solutions.

Knowing that this merger and acquisition was on the horizon, our team at Major Tom worked with the members of the Corix thermal energy team so that once news of it was made public, they would be able to confidently reintroduce the new Corix brand to the world with a new brand foundation, voice, and identity.

Solution

This relaunch of the Corix brand required three core updates; Brand foundation, voice and Identity.

Brand Foundation

Due to thermal energy shifting from being one of a handful of services to being the service Corix provides, the brand foundation (mission, vision, and values) was rewritten to infuse the beliefs of the thermal energy team into the brand’s core narrative. While thermal energy is considered one of the more eco-friendly energy systems, our team took care to limit the amount of environmental and sustainability language used to avoid coming across as green-washing and alienating certain potential partners.

Brand Voice

Up to this point, Corix had always engaged with two core audience groups, Private Developers and Public Institutions and Municipalities. There wasn’t a need to change this with the new brand either. However, based on our research, we were able to identify the need to connect and communicate with a third audience group; the End Users.

We discovered that many people living on energy grids powered by thermal energy systems didn’t even know what these systems were and how they differed from traditional energy systems. This seemed like a missed opportunity to educate a large group of people who could be talking about the positive impact of thermal energy systems and advocating for increased usage of this type of system to their local government.

Brand Identity

Early in the project, it was established that the Corix brand name was staying. This was due to a number of factors, but my importantly, it came down to the equity and positive reputation of the Corx in the industry. However, the existing brand identity was more focused on the now obsolete water divisions. We needed to shift the visual identity to be more in line with the thermal energy offering. But how do you build an identity to represent an energy solution which lives underground and largely goes unseen by the public? While their energy systems were innovative, this wasn’t their difference marker. It was, instead, how they perceived the world and solved unique problems. We had to highlight how they think.

This is why the new logo and brand identity are centred around the Necker Cube. This well-known optical illusion allows viewers to see a three-dimensional cube from two different perspectives, depending on how they perceive it. This idea of shifting perception and seeing different perspectives aligned with the Corix team and how they liked to approach thinking about the problems faced by their clients. That is why this ever-shifting and changing frame shape inspired by the Necker Cube became the anchoring element for the whole brand.

Results

The brand identity was finalized by our team in late 2023, which led to us shifting focus to developing their new website and marketing collateral earlier this year.

Launched in 2018, Tire Streets is a tire supply company that started by catering to Drifting enthusiasts. To continue growing while maintaining a meaningful connection to the motorsports community, the brand wanted to identify and engage with other emerging audiences in Drift, Track, Off-Road, Rally, and Performance while welcoming even more Enthusiasts. They needed the right messaging, USPs, and brand to resonate with fellow fans.

The Challenge

Tire Streets was already known for quick service, reliable shipping, and affordable, high-quality tires. But as their presence grew, so did their audience. Their original branding needed a tune-up to better connect with a larger, more diverse customer base, spread across multiple motorsports niches — while embodying their goal of making motorsports more approachable and affordable for the whole community.

The Solution

As Major Tom, we began with extensive research: customer interviews, a deeper dive into the industry, and a workshop with the Tire Streets team. This helped us identify a major opportunity for the brand. Six distinct audiences, all within their own needs and interests, and all within the motorsports community. Rather than a single approach, Major Tom developed an updated brand architecture, including refined messaging to better connect with each audience.

Still, we needed a single look and feel to embody all six groups, building on Tire Streets’ connection to the community. Major Tom assembled a new color palette, logo, and typography, all inspired by the energy and grit of motorsports. To capture that feeling, we included a collection of rough marker- and stamp-inspired textures, paired with updated brand photography to better show off their products — and tell the stories of the people who use them.

OUAI is an award-winning skin and haircare line with signature scents created by celebrity stylist Jen Atkin. With millions of followers across social media and a devoted customer base, they were a company at the top of their game, but were at risk of losing market share to newer competitors.

The Challenge

In early 2021, OUAI’s online revenue was increasing year over year, but user growth had slowed. In an effort to maintain media efficiency, they were focused on reaching existing customers at the expense of potential new fans. When OUAI approached Major Tom, they identified this slowdown as a leading indicator that would bottleneck future revenue growth.

The Strategy

To get ahead of the problem, Major Tom’s strategy focused on acquiring new customers for OUAI’s online store. Major Tom targeted segments of users who had never visited their site or placed an order, using a shifting combination of lookalike and interest-based targeting. This helped them reach the potential customers most likely to connect with OUAI, rather than work harder to convert those already buying.

First, Major Tom optimized campaigns to maximize user acquisitions, all within their target cost per acquisition based on customer lifetime value. Regular report cards helped evaluate which content was resonating with audiences — and where it worked best — as they continued to refine targeting with their growing pool of data. To maintain impact in the later stages of the campaign, Major Tom worked with the OUAI creative team to repurpose and refresh existing assets for their new digital placements.

The Results

Major tom reached and exceeded OUAI’s customer acquisition targets, giving them a strong foundation for future revenue growth. Major Tom’s campaign drove both traction and immediate returns for the brand throughout the year — a key factor in their acquisition by P&G in late 2021.

• 63% increase in user acquisition
• 73% increase in revenue
• 58% of customers in 2021 were new to the brand

Illesteva is an upscale eyewear line built on a tradition of unique design and contemporary styling. Designed in New York City and crafted in Italy, Illesteva began selling luxe shades in 2010, with modern twists on classic silhouettes made with top-quality materials.

The Mission

The brand came to Major Tom looking to increase online sales of their handmade Italian sunglasses. The brand felt they were missing out on a lot of opportunities to expand their reach and digital touchpoints with their audience.

Major Tom identified paid search as the easiest point to start, followed by Google Shopping, paid social through Facebook and Instagram, and display ads — for retargeting and prospecting — as ways to scale their digital advertising and drive new visitors and sales.

Being Smart with Paid Search

For paid search, the challenge was competing with some big-name players in the online retail space. Major department stores including Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, Barney’s, Macy’s, as well as leading designer brands such as Gucci, Prada, Versace, and Tory Burch lead to a crowded and competitive market.

Google Shopping required extensive customization and comprehensive SEO updates to put into action, after which we set up detailed reviews on various product performance to see what styles were gaining interest, and which were not showing up in online searches for eyewear.

Growing the Brand with Paid Social

Social rolled out with a different approach to targeting — deliberately avoiding those following the brand, and instead concentrating on lookalike audiences and retargeting for prospecting and reaching those yet to be familiar with Illesteva’s unique Italian eyewear.

Finally, to make sure they were measuring performance at a granular level necessary for so many products, media tactics, and complex visitor behaviors, Major Tom Team set up enhanced eCommerce Analytics tracking to monitor shopping habits and evaluate how to better improve conversion rate and user experience on the Illesteva online store.

Truth in Numbers

The initial weeks showed steady improvement in revenue and sales, before exploding after just four weeks in market. Return on ad spend (ROAS), beginning at a modest 235%, grew to 833% the following month and 1,750% the month after. Total revenue numbers continued to show an incremental increase.

With online sales hitting their stride, Major Tom could then begin to turn their attention to ongoing technical adjustments on SEO and conversion rate optimization (CRO). With paid media driving such qualified and revenue-driving traffic, Illesteva is well-positioned to continue improving results in other areas of their online store.