"Try 'em free" gets Foodservice flocking.

For client Inghams, our brief was to increase sales of its frozen red box product range (such as Chicken Nuggets and Cordon Bleu) by 20% in twelve months - a challenging figure by any standards.

To achieve these results, we engaged with foodservice users (such as chefs, restaurant managers, etc.) by introducing a trial initiative whereby buyers had the opportunity to try Inghams products for themselves for free. The trial programme allowed users to submit a request either via online or post and 'pick 3 for free' by selecting any 3 of Ingham 17 products they were interested in sampling. These products were then couriered to trial participants, and then we followed up with a phone call to engage with the user and get valuable feedback about Ingham's products.

The trial programme had a phenomenal uptake with foodservice users, achieving its annual targets within three months. The huge amount of interest from both existing and new business has also allowed Inghams to gain important insights and feedback about their product range, its brand and how to develop product offerings in the future.

Campbell's Velish warms hearts and minds.

The n.b. Marketing team helped Campbell's launch their new Velish range of ready-to-serve soups by engaging both consumers and media in their novel launch event.

Rather appropriately in the middle of winter and a recession, Aucklanders and Wellingtonians were encouraged to visit free 'pop-up' soup kitchens (previously empty retail space) every day for one week to enjoy a free bowl of Velish, courtesy of Campbell's. And as if that wasn't incentive enough, for every bowl of soup consumed, a carton of Campbell's Velish was donated to the City Mission in Auckland and Wellington.

Entertainment was a pots'n'pans percussion group performing in three high foot-traffic locations in the heart of Auckland City, while promotional staff handed out empty bowls of soup for commuters to take to the soup kitchen, as well as free samples.

High profile media coverage was achieved including a series of live weather crosses on Breakfast television, and extensive coverage in both print and online media. What's more, over 6,000 people visited the pop-up kitchens in Auckland and Wellington, equating to more than 6,000 cartons of Velish donated to the City Missions.

On top of all that, we also sampled the range of Velish Soup with four key media houses in Auckland targeting food and lifestyle media which generated further coverage.

Hundreds of Kiwis are now 'in the money'.

National Provident Fund has more than 50,000 members with unknown addresses that have accumulated since the 1960s. They have unclaimed monies totalling around $22 million.

NPF has been trying to return these monies to their rightful owners, but it has been a goal which was proving to be no easy feat. In 2007, following a TV One story, NPF received over 22,000 applications of which only 1,000 were legitimate. As you can imagine, this placed a considerable strain on resources trying to verify each application.

A new approach was called for. The first step was to revamp the NPF's website and make it easy for members, friends and family to search amongst the other 55,000 names. Once the website revamp was complete we agreed on and implemented an advertising campaign that directed people to the website in the first instance. People were to pre-qualify themselves to reduce the administrative strain.

In December 2008 a staged print campaign (using a combination of major metro dailies, regional newspapers and national) started from the bottom of the country - where the fewest New Zealanders reside - and worked its way up to the most populated areas. People were invited to look on the website and then download a form to send to the scheme administrator Jacques Martin if they believed they had savings with NPF. The region-by-region roll out gave the call centre time to perfect the approach and fulfillment before receiving the greatest number of queries.

The combination of the website and the staged advertising approach worked. Approximately 30% of all forms received were for people who have money with NPF. This was a vast improvement on the previous 2.5% success rate.

Wellington City Mission gets stellar results.

Acumen Republic has worked with the Wellington City Mission for over four years across a wide range of initiatives providing strategic counsel and delivery of their corporate communications programme and fundraising activities.

For their 2009 Christmas Appeal, the Wellington City Mission were aiming to raise in excess of one million dollars in a very tough economic environment. To achieve this, we recommended creating a simple, powerful and engaging campaign theme: one that would work across all their advertising and collateral, reward Wellingtonians for their donations and could ideally be built upon in future years.

Drawing inspiration from their logo, we created a campaign theme of 'Be a Christmas star'. The star was meaningful on many levels. Firstly, a star has been a symbol of hope and guidance for over 2,000 years. It's also a badge of pride, showing that you've dug deep and helped out - in other words, you're a star. What's more, it's a recognisable icon that could be used across all advertising and collateral as well as their existing fundraising mechanics, from volunteer T-shirts through to stickers, billboards, TV, radio, online banners and posters.

The campaign featured the Wellington city nightscape as well as compelling photographs of people in need of help - to localise the campaign so that Wellingtonians could take ownership of the problem.