Snack Brand LesserEvil Discusses OOH
You’ve got to love OOH if you’re a brand marketer. It’s location-based, has real-time and locational relevance, and there are no pesky brand-safety issues to worry about.
The Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA) is gearing up for the 2025 OOH Media Conference May 5-7, and some esteemed brands will be represented not only in attendance but on the stage.
“The Power of Presence” is the theme for this year’s gathering with a speaker lineup that includes Jim Mollica, Chief Marketing Officer, Bose; Jonathon McKenzie, Head of Brand Paid Media at HubSpot; Megan Smith, Growth Marketing Manager, Tecovas; Michael Wieder, Co-Founder, President & CMO, Lalo; Olivia Santarelli, Head of Marketing, Gemini; and Caitlin Mack, VP of Marketing, LesserEvil, an organic line of popcorn and others snacks that prides itself on being healthier than the others. Or at least less unhealthy, hence its name.
Mack sat down with StreetFight to discuss the brand’s embrace of the OOH channel.
Charles Coristine bought LesserEvil in 2011 when it was considered a “failing snack brand.” How would you characterize “failing?”
The brand was really at a standstill and hadn’t quite found our hero SKU yet. We were in need of an injection of some new, innovative thinking.
How did he turn it into the snack juggernaut it is today?
The first thing Charles did when he bought the company was to bring all our manufacturing in-house. This has been a gamechanger for us in terms of being able to really focus on the ingredients we want to use (organic, no seed oils) at the quality we demand. It’s also really allowed us to innovate at a rate much faster than the norm to ensure we’re always providing our consumers with something new and delicious.
Can you describe LesserEvil’s OOH strategy in the past few years?
We really started to dip our toe in the local Connecticut and NYC markets about two years ago and saw a ton of positive feedback from consumers discovering the brand. In 2024, we expanded that to hit three key markets for the brand in a more consolidated marketing push that included field marketing and a local CTV campaign. And this year, we’re expanding further to focus on new cities with a similar holistic approach.
What OOH innovations have you incorporated into your advertising?
We’ve mostly played around with extensions on billboards which have been really helpful in making our brand pop. We’ve also leveraged QR codes linking to our couponing partner Aisle.
How effective would you consider OOH to be as a channel for your brand?
It’s been great. Our bold colors and branding really lend themselves well to the visual nature of OOH. We also love how we’re able to leverage assets across digital channels to really extend the reach of our campaigns. I’m super excited to attend the upcoming OOH Media Conference to learn from others in the space and continue to innovate with this platform.
Do you work with an advertising agency? If so, which one?
All work last year was done via our internal creative team including photography and all graphic design. OOH buying was done via Quan Media Group.
Your last brand campaign was in September and carried the tagline, “Feed the Feeling.” When is the next campaign? Will it have a different tagline?
We’re launching a new campaign in April that will continue to lean into the “Feed the Feeling” tagline with a new twist. We’re working with SixTwentySix to produce a new commercial and OOH photography that will air in our six key markets via CTV which will be managed by our digital partner Anchour. Our internal design and marketing team will continue to own production for our final OOH creative and manage all digital and social assets. Quan Media Group wi manage all OOH media buys.
Does the brand conduct any hyper-local marketing?
In addition to OOH in six key markets, we are also excited to explore the potential for influencer and experiential activations to reach consumers where they’re at.
I read where it does well in terms of sales on the coasts and blue states. What plans, if any, do you have to capture the hearts of the heartland?
This has really changed within the last 2-3 years as we’ve expanded our distribution with national retailers like Costco, Walmart and Target. Our strategy hasn’t really changed. We’re really focused on our mission of making organic, clean, sustainably sourced snacks available to more people through a commitment to self-manufacturing our products.
The company has done a lot of work to refine the packaging, starting with a Buddha-li cartoon figure and then tweaking those. Do you tweak the design based on the region in which the popcorn is sold?
We took the brand through a large rebrand in 2018 and through that process we discovered our guru character is really the most defining piece of our brand. We decided to streamline his look and ultimately start to treat him like a Mr. Potato head figure where his (or her) look changes based on product attributes. We really love having the characters for our marketing and have begun to explore what they look like in a more 3-D space as well.
