Before we worked with Marine Ices, most of the business’s revenue came from old trade accounts, local customers and word of mouth, rather than a targeted marketing strategy that reached out to Gelato lovers across London and the rest of the UK.
Whilst Marine Ices was the pioneer of Gelato ice cream in London, over the years the brand had lost relevance and stagnated due to a lack of investment in branding and marketing. The brand message, marketing collateral and photography poorly represented the inimitable taste and quality that Marine Ices was renowned for.
Marine Ices knew that they boasted exceptional ice cream, which once experienced would result in repeat custom at their parlour and through more trade orders. Their core business problem was that they had lost significant market share to emerging Gelato brands– and they had no active strategy for new customer acquisition in order to re-invigorate the business.
Marine Ices needed a branding strategy that delivered excitement and amplified differentiation, that could then be rolled out across multiple marketing channels to boost sales and profitability across the business. We launched an entirely new brand idea, “Endless Summer, Whatever The Weather”.
The strategy was to tie Marine Ices more closely to the experiences and feelings that we wanted people to associate with their ice cream. Marine Ices’ Gelato represents the metaphorical “taste” of those great summer feelings. The brand has been positioned as a contemporary aspirational one, backed by 85 years of heritage.
We aligned the brand experience across the website and all print and point of sale collateral, equipped with stunning photography that we creatively directed, to effectively communicate the brand message and reposition the Marine Ices brand.
With a luxury design, logical user journey, compelling copy-writing and a search engine friendly build, the website was redeveloped from a passive online brochure to an active sales pipeline.
The marketing strategy we have created for Marine Ices has been a multi-channel one from building up reviews on review sites, increasing their PR exposure with glowing reviews published in several newspapers, SEO, social media strategy, copy-writing of their sales materials, consultancy on better conversion from trade shows and business development training using Linkedin.
Our brand positioning solution has been commercially powerful and stunning to behold and has manifested in a 150% increase in sales and profits for Marine Ices within 12 months.
They have been delighted with the increase in trade and consumer enquiries and the speed at which these have converted into lucrative new business, thanks to a clearly articulated brand proposition, cross-channel marketing and training of their sales teams to increase conversions.
The brand has won back significant market share and achieved recognition from their competitors and existing clients alike. We look forward to their continued growth and success.
Trade enquiries per month
For target search terms in Google
Mailing list signups per month
“Over the last 12 months, Futura has been a trusted business growth partner for Marine Ices and has been instrumental in the growth of our business through increased trade and consumer sales.
When initially approached we were sceptical to say the least - theirs was one of many cold approaches that we get. But their persistence and the commercially sound insights they shared with us, pointing out where we were leaving money on the table, compelled us to pay attention and ultimately led to the decision to work with them.
Futura has achieved something very special, an integrated and well thought out business growth solution that is commercially powerful and visually pleasing to behold and has contributed to an increase in sales for our business.
Their small team is truly cross-disciplinary and has aligned our growth aspirations with a very intelligent branding strategy that stands out from our competitors and which our customers love.
As well as being beautifully designed, the new website is fast, slick and easy to navigate – and is truly responsive, providing the same experience across multiple devices. The site reinforces the brand experience that our customers expect and since the site went fully live we have seen excellent results in increased revenues, increased conversion rates and very positive customer feedback.
Futura has become our “go-to” sales and marketing partner and has steered our search engine marketing and digital marketing strategy, re-written our sales materials - which now get an excellent response, provided advice for better conversions from trade shows and trained our sales team in Linkedin and email business development.”