HUNTERIn the 32 years since HUNTER was founded, the strategic and creative communications agency has worked with leading brands around the world. Over the past twelve months alone, HUNTER has expanded capabilities in three primary areas to serve clients’ needs: brand and business strategy; crisis communications/issues management; and corporate communications. The connective tissue between all three is a proprietary methodology the team developed this year to help clients articulate their corporate and brand purpose and mission and build this into their strategic foundations and resulting programming. With this, HUNTER has helped clients successfully navigate through supply chain challenges, tariff threats, diversity and inclusion and the movement to address systemic racism, among others. The team has also grown with 40 new staffers coming on board, including strategists and specialists in various practice areas to support both new business and organic growth – from copywriting to influencer strategy.
Notable long-term clients
TABASCO® Pepper Sauce, DIAGEO (Johnnie Walker, Tequila Don Julio), 3M (Scotch Brand, Command), Church & Dwight (Arm & Hammer, Batiste, WaterPik), Johnson & Johnson (Listerine, Band-Aid), Amazon (Amazon Prime, Amazon Music and Amazon Devices)
Recent client wins
King's Hawaiian, Chicken of the Sea, Sub-Zero Group, The Shade Store, Benjamin Moore, Le Creuset, Victoria’s Secret PINK, Love, Bonito, Nature’s Bounty Vitamins, Tytocare, Abbott Diagnostics
What was your biggest business challenge this year and how did your team overcome it?
This year gave new meaning to the term “pivot.” Client plans were scrapped, rebuilt, and scrapped and rebuilt again. Teams accustomed to huddling war-room style to manage through major client announcements and issues were huddled instead on Zoom and Teams in dining rooms, bedrooms, hallways – anywhere they could. Through it all, we innovated.
Our digital specialists quickly developed a “Weekly Digest” to inform ourselves and our clients of the evolving consumer reaction to dominating news of the week, brands programming against these trends and emerging best practices.
HUNTER also realized early on that content production could be impacted by concerns of Covid-19. We created Remote Content Kits including basic equipment for talent to self-capture and transfer video files, and a quick set of guidelines and best practices for planning and executing remote, contactless shoots. These proved essential in the weeks and months to come, when we have produced everything from remote sales meetings for our clients, to high-production value digital video content with celebrity talent.
To supercharge our ability to cost effectively survey consumers on the fly, HUNTER added the SUZY platform to our suite of insights tools in Q4 of 2019, which we have leveraged extensively throughout the pandemic for both client and agency-wide insights. When Americans found themselves relying on their kitchens more than ever before as a source of sustenance and entertainment, HUNTER used the SUZY platform to quantify how Covid-19 was impacting Americans’ food preferences and behaviors, as well as the potential for these new habits to result in lasting change. Within one month of the onset of the pandemic, we issued the HUNTER Food Study Special Report: America Gets Cooking, resulting in more than 100 major media placements citing the study, more than 7,000 views of the report, and an increase in traffic to our website of over 200%.
