Challenge:

Amélie’s French Bakery & Café, a French-inspired café known for their made-from-scratch pastries, savories and beverages, opened their flagship location in 2008 to bring Parisian patisserie charm to the local Charlotte community. Since then, Amélie’s had expanded to four other locations in North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia and was planning on opening a sixth bakery.

While the bakery had always been a much-loved spot for locals, after nine years in business Amélie’s noticed how the media coverage began to fade. Amélie’s reached out to SPARK to help increase awareness of their five store locations as well as provide support for the opening of their sixth location. Wanting to be known for more than just their coffee and sweets, Amélie’s hired SPARK to develop a public relations and social media program to secure media coverage, keep the café top-of-mind, promote their savory menu, and drive sales to the existing locations.

With the increase in competition and the amount of people moving to Charlotte, Rock Hill and Atlanta, SPARK knew this would be difficult in already saturated markets. One of the biggest challenges along the way was determining how to re-launch Amélie’s in a large market like Atlanta where the brand was relatively unknown. In addition to ongoing public relations and social support, SPARK was also tasked with opening a new bakery location.

Solution:

SPARK Strategic Ideas threw their aprons on and immediately began working on an annual public relations plan that included broadcast, print, online and social media influencer engagement. As part of the strategic plan, SPARK launched multiple campaigns to leverage Amélie’s name, food and beverage offerings, whimsical interior décor and expertise. Keeping the brand authentic and tone unique, SPARK designed a media kit to showcase Amélie’s history, background information, menu highlights, talented bakers, skilled baristas and their in-store design inspiration.

Armed with a plan and media kit, the SPARK team crafted ongoing pitches to the media, providing regional and national PR support to showcase their expansive offerings and seasonal menus. As management admitted, Amélie’s seasonal menus were one of the best kept secrets in Charlotte! No one knew that their chefs and baristas handcrafted over thirty new seasonal items, four times a year. SPARK began heavily promoting the quarterly seasonal menus, focusing on Amélie’s variety of options for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Utilizing the talented pastry chefs, SPARK scheduled on-air cooking segments with local broadcast stations in Charlotte to show the handmade process and fresh ingredients.

Each season, SPARK alternated in-store media tasting events with packaged send-outs for media to sample select items. SPARK developed creative ways to share these new seasonal menus by sending out fun packages highlighting flavors and providing samples to editors, writers and bloggers. For example: picnic baskets with sandwiches and wine were hand-delivered to key targets in the spring, and a summer send-out included a pack of new flavored French macarons along with small jars filled with herbs and spices to illustrate the flavor inspiration behind the seasonal menu. When not hand-delivering packages to media, SPARK developed a series of media preview tasting events designed to maximize news coverage and inspire conversation around the seasonal menu releases. When Amélie’s launched a few brand-new items for summer, SPARK hosted a patio party for media to sample the new macaron ice cream sandwiches and mimosa trays. To promote customizable éclairs for Valentine’s Day, SPARK expanded Amélie’s “Éclair Your Love” campaign by writing out sweetheart-style, personalized notes on trios of éclairs. These were hand-delivered to outlets to share the special menu for the week of February 14.

SPARK also planned a variety of campaigns to target the media, consumers and influencers—from various Yelp Elite events to coffee pressing lessons to pastry making classes to cake decorating sessions. Influencer partnerships were also key ways to engage with local consumers, so SPARK coordinated opportunities for tastemakers and bloggers to come in and sample items in exchange for social media posts.

In 2017, SPARK was tasked to launch the opening of Amélie’s Park Road Charlotte location. This included pitching news releases and media alerts, coordinating interviews and managing a media sneak preview event. Attendees loved the interactive element at the event of trying their hand at piping names on éclairs. Three months later, SPARK was responsible for the re-launch of the Atlanta bakery location to pique local interest and showcase the remodel and new design of the store. At the media event, SPARK helped unveil a custom exterior wall mural where the artist was working live to add the finishing touches.

Spearheading all marketing communications, SPARK also worked with Amélie’s on the rollout of a new coffee vendor and launched their new brand with a press release, media event and in-store promotional event. The PR team coordinated a coffee roasting tour and tasting at Pure Intentions Coffee (the new supplier) and hosted a Charlotte influencer night. Another milestone for the brand: Amélie’s celebrated their 10-year anniversary in 2018. To mark the occasion, SPARK pitched out story ideas to media to announce their “birthday cake” macaron with proceeds supporting local charities. From this promotion, Amélie’s raised $25,690 in total donations!