Blue Diamond taps creative AOR (Score 11)

Blue Diamond Growers (BDG) announced McKinney is now its creative AOR. The remit includes Almond Breeze almond milk and Blue Diamond snack almonds. McKinney is replacing incumbent shop TBWA/Chiat/Day, which held the account for about three years. Select Resources International reportedly led the review process. McKinney's first creative work is scheduled for Q1 2023. 

Per Pathmatics, BDG earned 129.2m impressions YTD through desktop video ads (40%), Instagram ads (26%), desktop display ads (19%), mobile display ads (11%) and Facebook ads (4%). It placed the majority (99%) of these ads directly onto sites such as youtube.com, instagram.com, health.com, realsimple.com and walmart.com. It placed the remainder (1%) through multiple indirect channels onto sites such as southernliving.com, espn.com, aol.com, yahoo.com and msn.com. It spent approximately $1.4m on digital display ads YTD, just 27% of the $5.2m spent in this channel during the same time period of 2021. Full-year spend increased by 20% from $6m in 2020 to $7.2m in 2021. 

**The above digital spend data refers to Almond Breeze and Blue Diamond.** 

According to iSpot, Almond Breeze spent around $12.3m on national TV ads YTD, a slight (8%) increase from $11.4m spent in this channel during the same time period of 2021. Full-year spend increased by 18% from $13.8m in 2020 to $16.3m in 2021. This year, it placed ads during programming such as Good Morning America, Chicago Fire, 2022 Winter Olympics, CBS Mornings and The First 48

iSpot also reports Blue Diamond Almonds spent about $5m on national TV ads YTD, a 43% decrease from $8.7m spent in this channel during the same time frame of 2021. It spent $10.2m in 2021, a massive jump from $30.8k spent in 2020. It placed ads during programming such as 2022 Winter Olympics, Family Feud, Chicago Fire, NCIS: Hawaii and This Is Us in 2022. 

Sellers-- BDG seems to be targeting Gen-Xers and millennials. The company allocates the majority of its marketing budget toward national TV and digital display ads. After BDG aggressively ramped spend up across both channels in 2021, it has been decreasing spend so far into 2022. However, Almond Breeze did slightly increase YTD national TV spend. It also invests in OOH, print and local broadcast TV ads, per Kantar. The company appears to be experimenting with its marketing budget. Reach out for more information to see what types of ad space you can offer. 

Agency & martech readers-- Agency reviews are known to follow one another, so I advise readers to contact BDG's DMs to see if it needs any more help. I believe the only agency you will face competition from is Harmelin, which takes care of media buying and planning.