AMPX Meals Brand Transformation & Digital Case study | AMPT Meals by Andy Malone
Client Brief
My brief or client meeting was about building an eCommerce website and helping the brand digitally. But I changed the brief and sold a bigger picture back to the client
Note to advertising / marketing consultants : Most of the time clients really want you to draw the big picture than ask for a requirement. Though this is subjective from case-to-case, I have seen the trend in most of the SME clients.
This is a client that I connected via my Linkedin outreach initiatives and a true testimony to how strategic brand positioning can transform a business. I met Andy Malone and his then business consultant to build eCommerce website & help in the digital transformation of the business.
AMPT or Andy Malone Physical Transformation was the name of the brand then and they were in the business of selling meal prep products across retail stores in Ireland. Andy was a salesman like no other I have met before & he has a talent to sell chicken curry as if it was the only thing you are meant to do in this world but the brand lacked the same aura and in my first meeting, I told them that the brand needs a total overhaul before we do anything.
AMPT was the brand he used from his early coaching days and he continued to use it for his meal prep business. Our conversations ticked of aspirations of becoming more than a meal prep brand and to getting into doing a lot more than just selling chicken curry.
My initial research concluded that AMPT wasn’t a brand name we could legally protect or trademark too & we concluded on changing the name.
Thus was the name AMPX born, something we could legally trademark and something that sounded like a lifestyle brand that can go places.
Note to entrepreneurs: When choosing a name for your business, look at trademark availability and domain name availability. My approach in terms of deciding or finding a perfect brand name is combining a couple of words or using google to find synonyms of certain words I want the brand to mean. Then I proceed with searching the trademark database for searching if there is any conflicting trademark and then proceed with domain availability. But if the name is stuck, I then double-check with the trademark attorney because even after everything there is still a possibility someone could oppose your trademark application. For instance, for AMPX objection came AMIX simply on the basis that it sounded similar. But having a good trademark attorney can make all the difference. I work with Marcella for all my EU trademark queries.
My initial presentation has two approaches for the brand as you can see. My personal favorite and the one that finally we decided to proceed with was about positioning the brand with hourglass or time, the only commodity in life that can’t be traded with.
But of course, the identity had an aura of its own which resonated with the brand - Andy Malone.
He wanted the brand to reflect the brand he is and for the same reason, the packaging was led with his face on it.
Though the initial focus was how the brand can be used for the meal prep business in terms of packaging, we also created extensions of the brand in clothing and accessories just to tease out how much the brand can do.
I do hope that I get to see the non-food-based extensions of the brand in days to come.
The next bit was to set up the eCommerce website and also building digital assets for the brand and of course the social media.
I decided to set up the eCommerce website on Squarespace and set it up through its current format has gone thru some changes from what it was.
Note to entrepreneurs: If you are looking to set up an eCommerce website, irrespective of whom you work with stick to platforms like Squarespace or Shopify which is easy to manage to scale up long term.
when it comes to social media, Andy was pretty hands-on and is a social media person all the way. My job was simply to amplify his voice and put in some creative juice to help him sell more.
The other major component I worked on AMPX was during lockdown when the brand decided to focus on online sales of the meals, I setup drip ( eCommerce CRM ) and build a backend for managing the backend process of managing deliveries, etc though I am not sure if they still use it.
But now that we have built the brand assets, it was more of a performance-driven activity.
We had monthly KPI’s to adhere to if you are wondering about the slide here that says ZERO media spend with a 100% increase in traffic, it’s not a trick but we got there by using influencers.
Andy always has worked with social media influencers to promote the brand but we took it one step ahead by getting more social media influencers on board and using affiliate links to track the traffic and sales they bought.
I can’t disclose much in terms of numbers there but I could say that it enabled a £300 investment on influencers to bring £6000 worth of sales in a calendar month to put things in perspectivd. It delivered both sales and an increase in social reach.
While I love to take credit for all, the end result was because a lot of things came in place for them to happen. AMPX had a good product, an excellent brand voice with Andy Malone and a constant yearning to do better that drove the business.
The (online) sales figures did not cross 100k£ overnight and took time and effort to get there and look forward to the see the brand in London and elsewhere in the world if all goes well.
I’d be happy to work with AMPX again given the opportunity and wishing the team Andy Malone all the very best for the growth ahead.
To be clear this was a team effort and couldn’t have been possible without their work. You can find more details about the team involved in the production and behind the scenes here.