Advantage Sales and Marketing LLC has outgrown its name.
The Irvine-based company has rebranded itself as Advantage Solutions to recognize a newcomer to its fold—the Digital Technology Division.
“Our name was great and served us well, but it no longer reflected who we really are as a best-in-class business services and solutions provider,” said Chief Executive Tanya Domier, who established the company’s marketing division 13 years after Sonny King founded the then-food brokerage in 1987. “We started with Advantage Sales and Marketing, but we only had sales. Then we added marketing, and now we have so many solutions, and that’s how we see the value that we add to clients. We look, we listen, we understand what pain points they have in the business, and then we build solutions across all of the tools that we have to offer, whether they’re sale solutions, marketing solutions, or technology solutions.”
Advantage, owned by private equity firms Leonard Green & Partners LP and CVC Capital Partners, will end 2015 with close to $2 billion in revenue. It has a work force of more than 40,000 worldwide, and its competitors include Acosta Inc. in Jacksonville, Fla., and Crossmark in Plano, Texas.
The new division supports Advantage sales teams that work with Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Kroger Co., Costco Wholesale Corp., Sam’s West Inc., BJ’s Wholesale Club Inc. and other major retailers, as well as some 1,300 packaged-goods brands.
Food makers such as a jelly brand, for example, hire Advantage to get their products to major retailers, and they might also ask for merchandising and category management services to make sure the product is diligently stocked on the shelf, or to find out what’s selling at what stores. A new digital platform Advantage acquired through the purchase of Bentonville, Ark.-based Atlas Technology Group Inc. will enable its team to deliver such data much faster. It also allows Advantage to sell the service to other brands that can use it to sort their product sales information that’s provided by retailers such as Wal-Mart, and cut down their workflow or “make revenue-impacting” decisions if need be.
And that’s just the tip of the digital iceberg as Advantage sees it.
“This industry unequivocally is moving to a more technology savvy business, especially in light of things like e-commerce and digital online marketing,” said David Cortese, the digital division’s president. “Brands are looking for ‘what apps should I be using, what online technology should I be leveraging, what in-store technology should I be looking at or at least being aware of what’s out there because it’s moving so fast?’ The digital element to [consumer packaged goods] and the retailer industry has its foot full down on the gas pedal moving forward, and we have to play here. We have to be able to bring these solutions to the clients.”
Atlas was the first of several acquisitions in the Digital Technology Division’s pipeline. The hunt continues, and another deal is expected to be completed within 45 days.
“I would love to get on a pace of having two or three a year come in,” Cortese said. “Atlas is absolutely killing it. This is an area that could have explosive, high-volume growth, and very healthy profit margins if we do it right.”
Acquisition targets will likely be “business-to-business technology plays,” since he’s “less focused on getting an app in the app store that I’ve got to try to get a million people to download and use to do something. I’m more interested in how do we bring great technology to manufacturers or brands, or to the retailers and help them grow.”
On the list is e-commerce—specifically content management programs—that would help brands that sell their products online manage their workflow better.
“They’ve got to send product content and images to different places, so why not have a platform that publishes that once versus having three different teams?” Cortese said, adding, “E-commerce is a place where we have to place some bets, because it’s very clear it’s only going to get bigger.”
He’s also looking into bringing beacon technology to stores where Advantage has set up product sampling operations. Beacon is a device that’s about the size of a quarter; it can pinpoint the location of customers who have downloaded various brands’ apps and deliver ads to their mobile devices.
“What beacon technology allows you to do is hypertarget in a micro location for a very specific brand or category,” Cortese said. “I walk into Target, and if I have its app, Cartwheel, I get a message: There’s a demo for Aidells sausage in aisle six today.’ I go to the cart where they’re doing the demo, and I can pick up the second beacon that says, ‘Thanks for visiting, here’s the coupon.’ ”
Advantage has “a number of assets in a lot of stores,” including carts, freezers, refrigerators, security pedestal covers, all of which can carry a beacon. It also has a work force in place to hit the ground running.
“We do hundreds of thousands of those events every year, and we believe we can talk to the brand that sponsors them and say, ‘How would you like to digitize this event?” he said. “Pieces are already in place. We have people who can deploy and maintain the network, we have people in marketing that are running platforms that we can sell against and who sell to brands.”
International
The rebranding efforts did not hamper Advantage’s international expansion plans. Advantage Smollan, its newly formed joint venture with Smollan Group, in June acquired REL Field Marketing, a U.K.-based field marketing company. That’s another trend that’s likely to continue.
“We’ve got three or four letters of intent for other companies that we’re planning to buy in Europe,” Domier said. “It’s a roll up. What we did in grocery and retail and food service (in the U.S.), we believe we can do very effectively and efficiently in Europe. And the technology solutions will be the key, as well.”
