The Smart Marketing Powerhouse – And We Mean Smart.: BRIGHT+CO

Our goal is to stay technologically agnostic, software agnostic, and pursue the system approach using the latest and greatest tools that are available to us.”

In today’s marketing environment, the requisite marketing prowess and communications skills needed for any company is extremely rare to find in one single supplier. Founded in 2013 by Jennifer Sutton, BRIGHT+CO realized this need by designing a team based on the client’s needs and collaborating with them to build the ideal one for the brand.

BRIGHT+CO sits at the intersection of business, marketing, journalism, technology and big data. The company’s business model does not operate using payroll services. Instead, teammates are hired on a contractual basis, and are vetted based on the contractor’s expertise and experience, pipeline needs and the contractor’s capacity. There are over 300 people in BRIGHT+CO’s community of marketing specialists. To date, it has approximately 10 people on its core team on full-time equivalent contracts, and 10 people on a part-time basis. This allows the company to design teams around a client’s need, budget or industry experience.

“Our team is vetted carefully, as we want the best people in each marketing discipline (from digital, PR, web, copywriting, art direction, photography, etc.) so that we bring Madison Avenue thinking and creative quality at more affordable prices,” said Jennifer.

BRIGHT+CO enjoys the challenge of working with organizations that have recognized the need to change how they do business—especially with their digital footprint. “Our approach to delivering profitable results is to start with customer insights, digital user experience and other analytics to build an outline of the end user’s journey and how it maps to an organization’s business model, culture and values,” she added. The end user behavior often outpaces the way organizations do business. This creates disconnects, pain points and missed opportunities. By creating a common view of the end user experience and working across functional areas and potential silos to address growth opportunities, BRIGHT+CO’s team of like-minded professionals have been able to consistently develop business strategies that drive business results.

Bridging Gaps in Communication Channels
Many agencies and brand specialists today approach branding and positioning from a marketing communications approach only, and many look at the communication channels as silos. As critical as marketing communications is in the success of a good brand, marketing communications alone can never do the job fully. That’s why the BRIGHT+CO team considers all aspects of the marketing equation to solve the marketing problem at hand. And, they understand how to bridge the gaps in the communication channels by consolidating data to synchronize media efforts so they are fully integrated.

Andy Mendelsohn, Jennifer’s strategic and creative partner, emphasized, “With our team, you will get that marketing communications power bundled with intelligent, strategic thinking. We have prowess in everything from branding and advertising, to pricing, process and physical environment. No agency offers the art and science of marketing in as nimble a way as we do.”

BRIGHT+CO finds gaps or points of weakness in the capitalization and optimization of the impressions that a company generates on a daily basis. Where BRIGHT finds value is helping companies make a shift in their approach to building a more strategic and advanced marketing framework that shows better results. And it does this through developing a digital marketing system, which helps close the gaps across many tactical silos.

The Standout Factors
Three things that differentiate the company are:

• The team’s level of experience and award-winning talent.
• The unique business model that allows clients to have large traditional agency benefits without the hefty price tag.
• The knowledge of how to bring both the art and science of marketing together to build brands across channels.

Building a Brand across the 7Ps of Marketing
“We are a full service marketing company that understands how to build a brand across the 7 P’s of marketing – and then to build an integrated communications program that generates better results,” implied Jennifer. The BRIGHT+CO agency model allows it to be much more contemporary, agile, cost- efficient and technologically savvy. “We make brands work Harder, Smarter & Tougher. And more creatively with how we execute your message. Brands aren’t just thought of, they are felt,” added Andy.

A good brand develops a relationship with the customer that turns that customer into your ultimate ambassador, your advocate, your champion whose passion for what you sell makes them impervious to a competitor’s lower price or temporary deal. A BMW driver is not switching to a Mercedes anytime soon, and an Apple user would rather use an abacus than a PC, regardless of price.

Client List
BRIGHT+CO’s clients are mostly US-based and headquartered in the SE and NE regions. The company has a depth of experience with CPG brands, QSR and other retail-based sectors, real estate and industrial/manufacturing global brands. Some of its notable clients are Café Enterprises, Wastequip and its family of brands (Wastequip, Toter, Galbreath, Pioneer, & Mountain Tarp), Microban International, Gulf Bay Group, and RSC Bio Solutions.

Looking Towards the Future
The company’s future focus is to continue building the business. It is currently seeking five new clients to take on in 2016 that have large national or global marketing needs.

“We offer clients more modern thinking for the money. We aren’t necessarily the lowest cost, but we will be the most innovative, the most nimble, the most responsive and the most idea-generative.”