Shaping a fresh chapter at Advantage Solutions

It's a new day at Advantage Solutions.

Advantage Solutions is stepping into a new era with a reimagined brand designed to reflect its transition into a unified retail solutions company positioned at the center of retailers, brands and shoppers.

While keeping its trusted name, Advantage is launching its new visual identity and messaging framework to reflect its industry leadership, and to convey the full suite of omnicommerce solutions it provides to brands and retailers to shape the way people shop, wherever they shop.

With relationships with more than 4,000 consumer packaged goods companies and most of the largest U.S. retailers, Advantage provides services in more than 100,000 retail stores coast-to-coast. But at its essence, Advantage is about people and relationships, with its 70,000-teammate workforce united in serving with heart.

"Today is a new day for Advantage," says CEO Dave Peacock. "I'm very proud and excited for our teammates who live and breathe the idea of 'One Advantage' every single day. Ultimately, our role is to keep commerce and life moving."

That's also the company's new tag line.

With 90% of the U.S. population - some 300 million people - sharing a zip code with a retail store Advantage serves, the company's work is essential to ensuring retailers and brands can provide shoppers with the food and personal care products they need to live healthy lives.

Advantage's 'essential' role

Advantage's refreshed brand is a visual manifestation of the business simplification and unification plan implemented by Peacock and his executive team, who have transformed the organization from a holding company of disparate businesses and agencies into a single unified enterprise providing a full suite of interconnected solutions.

With the company's position at the nexus of CPGs and retailers, it has an unrivaled view into the industry, Peacock says, which allows Advantage to help its clients grow sales, deliver the best returns on their investments and create momentum in the marketplace.

"When I think of Advantage, I think of our role in getting food and personal care items into people's hands and homes," says Chief Communications Officer Kelli Hammersmith, who led the yearlong rebranding effort. "While our work is most often directly seen by us or industry insiders, it's felt by nearly everyone. That's such an amazing - and essential - role to play."

Inspired by teammates

Each day, in stores across the U.S., in Canada and beyond, tens of thousands of front-line Advantage teammates are hard at work.

They build in-store displays, stock shelves, track inventory and offer product samples, to name just a few of their responsibilities. In good times and in bad, they are the unsung heroes ensuring retail stores are welcoming, shelves are filled and shoppers have easy access to the brands they love and the products they need, Peacock says.

In equal measure, they provide smiles and solutions, he says. And they serve as the primary inspiration for Advantage's new brand.

"We don't make products, we don't have widgets," Peacock says. "We have people and the hours they commit, and that's really important for folks in this industry to understand. Our people build long-lasting and trusted relationships with our brand and retailer clients."

That includes its work as the industry leader in private-brand development, the industry leader in in-store and digital sampling and the No. 1 retail merchandising company.

Advantage expands on its extensive relationships and reach with solutions that shape the online shopping experience, helping brands and retailers reach consumers with personalized promotions and rebates, digital sampling and subscription boxes, online beauty advisors and more.

Under the unified brand, those teammates now will operate collectively, rallying under a common brand and a common cause they lacked previously, Peacock says.

A new look and fresh vibe

Reimagining a brighter future for the company required reimagining the brand, Hammersmith says.

"For our new logo and brand identity, we wanted something fresh and inspiring and that also ties more closely to the industry we're in," she says.

To that end, the new Advantage logo eschews the dark blues and sharp geometric shapes of the past for shades of green that reflect a "fresh, modern aesthetic - an organic expression reminiscent of a market," she says. It includes ribbons and loops that reflect the company's extended scale, connectivity and relationships while evoking a friendlier, more flexible vibe. The logo's main loop is not only an interpretation of the Advantage "A," but there's also a human element to the design.

"The idea that we shape every way people shop and that we are agile and flexible is reflected in the logo and the loops," Hammersmith says. "It reinforces that we have a lot of reach. We move, we ebb and flow."

The focus on the human element also highlights Advantage's positioning as a people-first organization.

Beyond the new Advantage green, design elements include the use of yellow, purple and orange - colors that subtly convey the optimism of a sunrise.

"The overall theme of the new look is that it feels promising," Hammersmith says. "It's like a new day and reflects new possibilities for everyone we touch."

Continued evolution

Having divested the company of non-core businesses, Advantage has simplified its business by re-segmenting its operations into three business units collaborating to deliver the core differentiated solutions it provides to retailers and CPG companies. Those five core solution areas include: insights and sales growth; brand and retail execution; product, aisle and shelf reinvention; private brand solutions; and omnichannel and experiential marketing.

Advantage also is revamping its website and migrating to YourADV.com, which launched today as a teaser site. The full site, which is in the final stage of completion and slated to debut in the coming weeks, showcases the company's new, simplified business structure.

In an industry that is constantly evolving, so is Advantage Solutions.

"We will keep innovating as shoppers keep changing," Hammersmith says. "When Advantage was first created 37 years ago, the internet, apps and social media didn't exist."

Advantage, she says, is "always evolving to meet and anticipate the changing needs of shoppers and the industry. And we'll equip our teammates with the right tools to work smarter, faster and better so they can achieve more for brands, retailers and shoppers in their communities. In doing so, we'll create more space for our teammates to shape and become their Advantage."

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