Blue Bear Creative

I'm the director of marketing at Purely Elizabeth, a natural products company with the #1 granola in the natural channel and also a line of oatmeals, oatmeal cups, and nutrition bars. I lead a five-person marketing team and report to our CEO.

We hired Blue Bear Creative to product around 10 unique videos ranging from 15–90 seconds for various social media channels and our website. We asked them to produce a variety of video types, from a founder story to recipe videos to product feature videos.

Our goal was to produce high-quality video at a low cost that conveyed the brand's product range, aesthetic, and values and that would perform well across social media channels, especially Facebook and Instagram.

I looked at a variety of options, ranging from freelancers to larger agencies. I selected Blue Bear Creative because they were nimble, had experience with larger productions, and were a relatively low cost.

Blue Bear Creative helped finalize the creative vision for the videos, establishing visual guides and a production plan. They were on location for filming, working with us and an external video production team during the two days of shooting. They then managed the editing, feedback, and completion of the assets.

Blue Bear Creative used a simple grid on Google Sheets to manage the different cuts and edits. They always responded promptly to edits and feedback.

They completed all of the requested assets within budget and at the expected quality. They underestimated the time needed for feedback, which pushed back our original timeline, but we ended up with high-quality assets that we were pleased with.

Their workflow was good, and they were highly responsive. When email became too complex to manage the edits and versions, they developed a shared document that was easy to use and track.

Blue Bear Creative's cost-to-quality ratio was incredibly impressive. We needed to be a bit more involved with them than with other agencies, but their costs are great and they deliver high-quality work.

Communicating responsibilities on the days of shooting could've improved; it felt a bit disorganized, and my team ended up doing a lot of prep work that Blue Bear Creative had stated they'd do. Their quality and price are a great value, but a slight lack of professionalism on set was symptomatic of a younger, less polished agency.

I'm the integrated marketing associate at a consumer packaged goods startup that produces dairy-free protein bars and energy bars. Our company has about 15 employees and we sell nationwide. I manage the relationship with our agency and execute brand partnerships.

We needed a partner to manage our monthly social media content and copy, mainly on Instagram and Facebook.

We wanted to build our social reach and differentiate the brand through engaging content, mainly on Instagram. We're a fairly small company, so having them manage our content production took the load off our back.

We did our own research and asked for some referrals before choosing Blue Bear Creative.

Our first step was agreeing on the amount, types, and price of the content they'd produce. They conduct bi-monthly on-site brainstorm sessions to come up with concepts, and we provide feedbck for reiteration on a daily basis. They also plan and implement our editorial calendar and manage monthly reporting and analytics. Our internal team posts the content natively, but Blue Bear Creative manages the ongoing strategy and best practice recommendations.

I work closely with the creative director, copywriter, and integrated producer. Additionally, they have an account supervisor who manages most of the communication, and a media manager who provides the monthly reporting and analytics.

Blue Bear Creative has produced cohesive content that's solidified our brand identity and voice. Each round of content has been a fresh slate of creative ideas, perspectives, and concepts that our consumers enjoy.

They're great at communicating any updates, changes, and questions on a daily basis to make sure things get done. However, we've struggled at times to get ahead in the planning process, which doesn't leave much time for reiteration or feedback.

The creativity and breadth of the content they've produced is amazing—from gifs to images to short videos—they're extremely versatile. They patiently work with us to produce the best content possible.

We'd appreciate them providing more strategic insights and applying those recommendations to future content. They only seem to work on this when we request it, even though it's in their scope of work.

I’m the CEO and Founder of Chinook Seedery, a food manufacturing company and purveyor of all-natural premium sunflower seeds.

As a startup brand, our biggest challenge is that no one’s heard of us before. We needed to build brand awareness by getting the message out about what we do, what we stand for, and why we are unique to as many people as possible.

They completely rebuilt the web site and transferred everything over to Shopify as e-commerce is an underutilized tool for us. Working with our existing logo and packaging, they developed a site that is visually appealing, functionally strong, and encapsulates the feel of a clean, “better-for-you” product.

We worked most closely with Alex [Founder and CEO, Blue Bear Creative], but also with two others on his team.

We interviewed several companies, but landed on Blue Bear after seeing their innovative past work. They have a deep understanding of millennial consumers, what they’re interested in, what they want to see on social media. They also have a niche focus on CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) companies and food companies specifically, which was very important to us. They know how to market to buyers and stores that may want to put our products on their shelves.

On average, we spend $3,000–$4,000 per month for social media management and other digital marketing initiatives. Building the website was a higher-cost project—roughly $12,000.

We started working with Blue Bear in late 2014, and the engagement is ongoing.

In the first month after the new site launched, sales increased 35% over the previous month. Since then, we’ve averaged a 10%–15% increase every month. The new site is great at filtering potential consumers through the process of identifying what makes us different and leading them to the checkout page.

They’ve always been very responsive. I’ll email them an idea and usually will hear back within the hour. They get projects done quickly and hit deadlines. They are small enough to truly make their clients a priority.

Their understanding of visual elements presence in social media is their strongest suit. We always get positive feedback on how visually appealing our Instagram and Facebook ads are. We've got a really cool-looking page with engaging photos and Blue Bear is behind all of that.

They don't have some of the benefits of a large marketing agency. For example, they can’t provide the viewpoints of 20 people on a project, which can be valuable. That's just a limitation of company size.

Make sure you have the right product for them. They are an innovative agency with a focus on millennials, so if you want to reach them, they’re absolutely the company for you. If you're looking to expand in a different demographic, however, another digital marketing agency may be a better fit.

Smashburger is a fast-casual burger chain with 350 locations. I was the social media coordinator when I worked there.

We wanted to target millennials in our social media efforts and we knew that Blue Bear Creative had a specialty in that area.

Blue Bear Creative helped with everything, from brainstorming campaigns to content creation. They were responsible for shooting videos, taking pictures, editing pictures, creative graphics, writing copy, launching campaigns, building websites, etc. They’re a well-rounded social media company that can do a little bit of everything. They helped us with Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat. We had everything outlined in our initial contract that included how many pictures they would provide each month, how many Snapchat stories, and how often they would need to review our copy.

We connected with them because they were an agency out of Colorado. We talked to a lot of social media companies.

We spent under $60,000 per year on their services.

The work is ongoing.

Within the first year, we had over 200% growth on our Instagram channel. We launched with them on Snapchat and did a couple of campaigns that helped us get over 10,000 followers. Our hashtag campaign had over 9,000 submissions. It was neat to see the transformation of our photos, copy, and videos and having a more cohesive social media across all channels. I was very happy working with them.

I was in charge of project management and they followed the agenda I created. They were good at meeting deadlines without us having to push them. We had a short turnaround time, which Blue Bear was able to meet. If there was something we didn’t like about their work, they were always good at taking feedback and fixing it.

If there’s something that’s not in their wheelhouse, they find a way to make it happen. There’s nothing they can’t do from a social media and digital standpoint. They have a great background in PR and can help with fresh, millennial-focused ideas. We had a great experience working with them. I would love to work with them where I’m currently employed.

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