Codarity · market briefing

Market briefing for YumLoveMore Experience Agency

Prepared for Allison Tonnies. This is research about your market and where your firm sits in it, ending in a path. It is not a proposal.

What you do: Better-for-you CPG food and beverage experiential sampling, national sampling tours, mobile brand environments, brand ambassador and street team activations, and sponsorship activations at lifestyle events, ski resorts, festivals, college campuses, expos, and retail locations.
Prepared: 23 August 2026

02 · what you told us

Your answers

You answered four questions. They are here first because everything after this reads differently depending on them.

No answers on this record. This render uses the research only, which is how the report reads before the four questions are submitted.

03 · your market

How your buyers decide

Before anything specific to your firm, one thing about how your buyers behave, because it explains most of what follows.

5 actively looking now12 forming a view quietly83 not looking yet

5 in every 100 of your buyers are actively looking right now. 12 are forming a view without talking to anyone. 83 are not looking at all and will be at some point. Almost all marketing in this market is built for the first group. The work that compounds is built for the second.

04 · your buyers

Who is actually in the room

A decision about brand activation contracts is almost never one person's. It is five seats, and on a small team one person holds two of them. Over 221 days each seat arrives at its own conclusion, mostly without talking to you.

Most firms in this market write their website, their proposals and their whole pitch for one of these five: the seat that runs the event. It is the seat they meet, so it is the seat they answer. The other four decide anyway.

The one whose neck is out

CEO · Managing Director · Chief Marketing Officer · VP Marketing

Wants: a result they can point at in a board meeting. The event is a means to something they have already promised upwards.
Afraid of: spending a large number and having nothing defensible to show for it. Not failure exactly, ambiguity.
Actually asks: “If I am asked in six months whether this was worth it, what do I say?”
Settled by: a supplier who talks about outcomes and measurement before they talk about production values.

The one who has to run it

Head of Events · Events Director · Events Manager · Event Marketing Manager

Wants: a delivery that does not consume them. They have done this before and they know exactly which parts go wrong.
Afraid of: a supplier who is impressive in the pitch and unreachable in week six. They have been burned and they remember it.
Actually asks: “When something goes wrong at 6pm the night before, who actually answers the phone?”
Settled by: specifics about process, escalation and named people, rather than a showreel.

The one guarding how it looks

usually leads in consumer brands

Head of Brand · Brand Director · Head of Communications · Creative Director

Wants: something that feels like them and lands with their audience, not a generic event with their logo on it.
Afraid of: cheapness. A stand, a stage or a room that undercuts everything else they have spent the year building.
Actually asks: “Will this look like us, or like an event company's idea of us?”
Settled by: evidence the supplier understands their market and their audience, not just their sector.

The one who signs it

Finance Director · CFO · Head of Procurement · Commercial Director

Wants: predictability. A number that does not move and a process that survives an audit.
Afraid of: scope creep, and being the person who approved the thing that overran.
Actually asks: “What is the number, what changes it, and what happens if we cut it by twenty per cent?”
Settled by: commercial clarity offered early and unprompted, rather than extracted during negotiation.

The one who has to live with it

Head of Sales · Sales Director · Head of Product · Head of People

Wants: the event doing the job they need it to do: pipeline, a launch that lands, a team that comes back motivated.
Afraid of: an event that is beautiful and useless. Lots of photographs, no conversations that went anywhere.
Actually asks: “What do I get out of this on the Monday after?”
Settled by: a supplier who asks what happens after the event before they ask about the venue.

Specific to consumer brands

The brand seat leads and is unusually unwilling to compromise, because the event is an expression of the brand rather than a channel for it.

Read the four “afraid of” lines together and the pattern is hard to miss. Not one of them is afraid you cannot do the work. They are afraid of ambiguity, of being unreachable, of looking cheap, of overrunning, and of spending a great deal on something that changes nothing on the Monday. A portfolio of beautiful past events answers none of that.

05 · your buyers

The 221 days before they call you

Everything after this hangs off one number. In B2B event services the gap between a buyer starting to look and a buyer making contact averages 221 days. Nearly eight months of deciding, almost all of it in private, and almost all of it before anybody picks up a phone.

Start with what is working, because it is not nothing. Of the places a buyer actually looks, you are already there on published proof of delivered work. In this market that puts you ahead of most: it is what a buyer needs to see before they will take a meeting, and plenty of firms your size cannot show it.

Now the part that is harder to see from inside. A buyer in this market spends 221 days researching before they make contact. Across the 10 places we can actually check, YumLoveMore Experience Agency is present at 1 of them and absent from 70 per cent. Every gap sits early: being findable when a buyer asks an AI assistant, publishing a point of view where they already read, reaching the right accounts before they are looking and staying present when they go quiet mid-cycle.

before they are looking

asks an AI assistant who the credible suppliers arecontent an AI can find, cite and summarise: not yet; no substantive content surface, so there is nothing for an assistant to cite
searches the problem, months before searching for a supplierpages that answer the question behind the search: partly; a blog exists but the site reads as thin, so it answers few real questions
reads their feed and forms a view of who understands this workfounder-led publishing on LinkedIn: not yet; no publishing activity found
sees the name somewhere that is not the supplier's own websitedigital PR, earned mentions, speaking: partly; one third-party mention found: Forum For Naturals interview featuring Allison Tonnies on YouTube. One is a start, not a presence
never comes looking, because they already have someonenamed-account outreach and DMs: cannot tell from outside; nothing outside your business can show this. It is the first thing worth asking about

researching in private

is not looking yet, and needs to have heard of you before they areLinkedIn brand and thought-leader ads to the right accounts: not yet; no LinkedIn advertising
disappears for four months mid-cycle, then comes backretargeting that keeps you present without nagging: not yet; no retargeting, so a buyer who leaves mid-cycle is gone
wants the thinking without having to talk to a salesperson yetsomething worth an email address: not yet; nothing to exchange for an email address, so interest arrives anonymous or not at all
is 221 days from enquiring and will forget you in 30a nurture sequence that stays useful, not a mailshot: not yet; no route to stay in contact between briefs

building a shortlist

types a buying-intent search once the brief is realGoogle Ads on the terms that carry intent: not yet; no paid search

choosing

checks you can actually do the work, once you are on the listcase studies and named clients: you are here; delivered work is written up and published
(not a buyer touchpoint: whether you can see any of the above)first-party tracking across a 221-day cycle: cannot tell from outside; nothing outside your business can show this. Over 221 days it is the difference between knowing and guessing

70%

of the buyer research journey we can see, you are absent from. Present at 1 of 10.

Two things on that list we have deliberately not scored, and they are the same two on every briefing we produce. Whether you are approaching named accounts directly, and whether you can see which of these actually produces work. Nothing outside your business reveals either, so guessing would be worse than useless. They are the first two questions worth asking on a call, and between them they usually explain more than the rest of the list.

That is the whole of it. Not a pitching problem, not a pricing problem. For roughly 221 days a buyer is forming a shortlist you are not on, and by the time they enquire they have already chosen. The work you lose this way never appears as a loss, because you were never invited to bid for it. It looks like a quiet quarter.

Worth being precise about proof, because it is where most firms in this market put their effort. Case studies are a filter, not a route in. They win the comparison once you are already on the list, which is the last few days of 221. Every firm you are up against has them. None of it reaches the months before, and that is where the shortlist is actually built.

What closes that gap is not doing more of what you already do well. It is being demonstrably the firm that understands brand activation contracts better than anyone else, in the places your buyers are already looking, for the whole of those 221 days. That is what the rest of this is.

07 · your market

Your buyer market

This is the size of the reachable buying side of your market at the seniority that signs off event work. It is not a list of prospects. It is the ceiling on how large the always-on layer can usefully get before targeting has to narrow.

231

people at the seniority that signs off event work, in consumer brands, reachable today.

08 · your market

What your competition is doing

This is what the firms you are up against are actually doing to get found, taken from our own research rather than a survey. Most of them are in the same position you are: strong on proof, absent from everything before it. Where a bar is short, that is room nobody is competing for.

you already do thisnot something you do todayDenominator is 54 researched firms of this type.

09 · the hinge

What that means for you

The research reads a firm with real standing in its market and an acquisition surface that is partly built. Two things in the research point the same way: corporate buyers with an active market presence and credibility offline, not discoverable online.

The tension is that the credibility and the acquisition path are not yet joined up, so the standing you have does not compound into work arriving on its own.

The fastest change available to YumLoveMore Experience Agency is not a bigger effort across everything. It is being findable when buyers search, because it is the one thing every other move depends on and the one thing currently absent. You become discoverable to people who are not yet in a buying process, which is when a shortlist is actually formed. Somewhere for interest to land follows it directly, and the rest of the board is ordered behind those two.

What the research found

YumLoveMore Experience Agency is a boutique experiential sampling agency based in Scottsdale, AZ and Chicago, IL, specializing in face-to-face marketing for better-for-you CPG food and beverage brands. Founded in 2014 by Allison Tonnies (originally as bluprint Experience Marketing), the agency designs and manages national sampling tours, mobile brand environments, brand ambassador and street team programs, and sponsorship activations at lifestyle events, ski resorts, festivals, college campuses, expos, and retail locations. With 11-50 employees, the agency has delivered campaigns for major brands including So Delicious (5 million samples / 390 million impressions), Canyon Bakehouse (2 million samples / 200 million impressions), Dannon Light & Fit, Silk, Horizon Organic, and Annie Chun's, among others.

10 · the path

The full board

This is the whole system, not a proposal. Four pillars, and within each one the two modules that would do the most for YumLoveMore Experience Agency given what the research found. Two are lit for the first quarter. One is marked as deliberately not yet. Everything grey is real work that is simply not the next work.

first quarteron your path, later quartersdeliberately not yetreal work, not your next work

Deliberately not yet

One move in Attraction is held back on purpose. Named-account targeting is the right next step and premature until the always-on layer produces consistently on its own.

11 · the path

Authority

Authority is whether a buyer can satisfy themselves that you are credible without speaking to you. It is the pillar everything else borrows from.

Being findable when buyers search

First quarter

A small set of pages that answer the questions your buyers put into a search bar before they have a shortlist.

Why it is here: This is the first move, because there is no content surface for a buyer to find you on before they have a shortlist. The research is unambiguous on it: credibility offline, not discoverable online. Everything in the quarters after this one assumes it is in place.
What changes: You become discoverable to people who are not yet in a buying process, which is when a shortlist is actually formed.
First move: List the ten questions you get asked most in a first call. Each one is a page.
You will know because: Search starts to appear as a source on new enquiries.

What this looks like · positions you as the people who explain how national sampling actually works, months before a brand writes a brief

Article on your site
When a tour vehicle is stuck in a ski resort car park on a Saturday, who answers, and what happens in the next hour
for the one who has to run it
Article on your site
What a sampling tour can honestly prove and what it cannot, and which numbers survive a second question from finance
for the one whose neck is out
Article on your site
The details that decide whether a mobile brand environment reads as your brand or as a folding table, and what to specify before you approve the build
for the one guarding how it looks
Paid search theme
Bid on the cost questions, not the service: sampling tour cost per market, brand ambassador day rates, what changes a quote, landing on a page that says plainly what triggers an overrun
for the one who signs it

Founder-led publishing

Quarter 2

Using the personal profile that already carries trust, on a rhythm rather than in bursts.

Why it is here: On the board for YumLoveMore Experience Agency because the personal profile already carries more trust than the company one, and it is being used in bursts rather than on a rhythm.
What changes: Buyers meet a named person with a view, which is the version of you they remember.
First move: One post a week for a quarter, drawn from decisions you actually made on live work.
You will know because: Inbound conversations open with something you wrote.

What this looks like · positions you as allison as a named voice on better-for-you sampling rather than an agency logo

LinkedIn post
Allison on a decision made at 5am on a tour day, why it was made in ten minutes, and what the brand manager heard about it afterwards
for the one who has to run it
LinkedIn post
Allison on what she would want signed off before a mobile environment ships, and why saving money on one on-site element costs a brand more than the build
for the one guarding how it looks
LinkedIn post
Allison on what she changed her mind about in better-for-you sampling this year, and the number she stopped putting at the front of a recap
for the one who has to live with it

12 · the path

Attraction

Attraction is how interest reaches you and what happens to the interest that is not ready to become an enquiry.

Somewhere for interest to land

First quarter

A path for the visitor who is interested but not ready to send an enquiry, so their interest is not lost.

Why it is here: This runs directly behind the first move, because interest that is not ready to become an enquiry currently has nowhere to go. On a buying cycle measured in quarters, the two together are worth more than either alone.
What changes: The majority of your traffic that is researching quietly becomes a known contact instead of an anonymous visit.
First move: One thing worth an email address, built from the proof you already hold, behind a form that asks for very little.
You will know because: A list that grows every month without paid support.

What this looks like · positions you as the thinking a brand team borrows to write their own internal case for sampling

Lead magnet
A one page measurement agreement for a national sampling tour, filled in before the first market, so the six month review already has its answer
for the one whose neck is out
Lead magnet
The budget note a brand manager can forward to finance: what is fixed, what moves with venue and staffing, and what counts as a change order
for the one who signs it
Lead magnet
The sampling day checklist for a field or shopper marketing manager: what ambassadors should be asking consumers, and what should be on your desk Monday morning
for the one who has to live with it

Turning up where buyers already are

Quarter 3

Deliberate presence in the places your buyers gather, rather than waiting to be found.

Why it is here: On the board for YumLoveMore Experience Agency because you are findable by anyone already looking and invisible to everyone who is not.
What changes: Feeds the top of the funnel so the layer underneath has something to work on.
First move: Pick the two places your buyers actually spend time and show up there weekly for a quarter.
You will know because: Enquiries from people you have never met, naming where they saw you.

What this looks like · positions you as present in front of better-for-you brand teams long before the sampling brief exists

Brand campaign
A running campaign on the difference between sampling that looks like the brand and sampling that looks borrowed, built around real resort, festival and retail environments
for the one guarding how it looks
Brand campaign
A campaign against the quiet activation: photographs are not conversations, and what a sampling day should send back to the brand team by the end of the week
for the one who has to live with it
LinkedIn post
The question field managers ask most, who is actually on site by market four, answered in public with roles, staffing ratios and who they call at night
for the one who has to run it

13 · the path

Automation

Automation here means giving you the hours back, not taking the people out. The conversations stay yours. What goes is the repetitive work stacked around them.

Staying useful between briefs

Quarter 2

A regular, genuinely useful contact with people who are interested but not buying yet.

Why it is here: On the board for YumLoveMore Experience Agency because the buying cycle here runs in quarters and there is nothing keeping you useful across it.
What changes: On a buying cycle measured in quarters, this is what makes you the name they already know when the brief lands.
First move: A monthly note to everyone who ever raised a hand. Short, and about them.
You will know because: Replies from people who went quiet eighteen months ago.

What this looks like · positions you as still useful to a brand team three quarters before the sampling budget is approved

Nurture branch
For the brand lead whose issue is "if I am asked in six months whether the tour paid back, what do I show", a slow series on evidence from face to face sampling
for the one whose neck is out
Nurture branch
For the brand or creative director who cannot get sampling past their own guidelines, a branch on how builds, uniforms and on-site assets get approved internally
for the one guarding how it looks
Nurture branch
For the field or shopper marketing manager with no brief yet, a seasonal note on what worked at resorts, campuses, festivals and retail, and what did not repeat
for the one who has to live with it

The same first steps, every time

Quarter 4

The tedious sequence every new opportunity goes through, held as tasks and checklists rather than in somebody's head: the questionnaire, the RFP review, the internal sign-offs.

Why it is here: On the board for YumLoveMore Experience Agency because the same set of steps runs on every new opportunity and none of it is written down.
What changes: The boring work stops depending on who picked it up and how busy they were. You get the hours back and the process stops varying.
First move: Write down what actually has to happen between an enquiry arriving and a proposal going out. That list is the workflow.
You will know because: Nothing stalls because one person was on site all week.

What this looks like · positions you as consistent when three tours are live, which is exactly when brands judge you

Workflow
Enquiry in to proposal out as a checklist: acknowledgement, discovery questions, market and venue feasibility, staffing check, none of it depending on who opened the email
for the one who has to run it
Workflow
Insurance, staffing model, sampling permits and measurement approach held in one place, so a day of retyping vendor questionnaires becomes an hour of judgement
for the one whose neck is out
Workflow
One written definition of a live opportunity, with the brand's guidelines and approval chain stored beside it, so two people read the same status the same way
for the one guarding how it looks

14 · the path

Architecture

Architecture is the plumbing. Unglamorous, and the reason the other three either compound or leak.

Crediting the first touch, not the last

Quarter 3

Recording what a buyer had already seen before they made contact, not just the click that carried them in.

Why it is here: On the board for YumLoveMore Experience Agency because the long half of the buying cycle is invisible in what gets recorded, so the work that starts decisions cannot be defended at budget time.
What changes: On a decision that takes 221 days the last touch is the doorway, not the reason. Crediting only the doorway defunds everything that did the work.
First move: One question on the enquiry form: where had you come across us before today?
You will know because: The channels you were about to cut turn out to be the ones being mentioned.

What this looks like · positions you as able to prove which of this started the conversation, not just which one closed it

What to measure
Which of this starts a better-for-you CPG food and beverage experiential sampling conversation
for the one who has to run it
What to measure
Every touchpoint scored by distance from a signature
for the one whose neck is out

One pipeline, agreed stages

Quarter 4

Every live opportunity in one place, with stages everyone reads the same way.

Why it is here: On the board for YumLoveMore Experience Agency because there is no single place that answers what is actually coming.
What changes: You can see what is actually coming, which is the difference between forecasting and guessing.
First move: Agree five stage names, then move every open opportunity into them.
You will know because: The pipeline answers questions instead of raising them.

What this looks like · positions you as able to see which brand conversations are real, quarters before a contract is signed

Workflow
The first five steps on every brand enquiry, written down once, so a busy tour week gets the same response as a quiet one
for the one who has to run it
What to measure
Record every contact with a brand across the 221 days and where it sat before the signature, so early visibility work is not later mistaken for waste
for the one whose neck is out

15 · the path

Sequence roadmap

Four quarters, in dependency order. This is not a proposal for four quarters of work. It is the order the modules have to happen in if they are going to hold, so that if you only ever do the first quarter it still stands on its own. Arrows mark where one module needs another in place first.

Dotted arrows mark a dependency: the module at the point needs the one at the tail in place first.

16 · the system

What sits underneath

Under each of those four pillars sits roughly a hundred smaller moves. Nobody needs all of them, and nobody should try. It is here so the eight modules on your board read as a choice made from the whole picture rather than the whole picture itself.

Roughly ninety moves sit under the four pillars. Eight are on your board. The fog is the point: nobody needs all of it.

17 · the system

What it becomes

Compounding is the part that is hard to picture from the first quarter, because the first quarter mostly looks like effort. Eclipse Global has been running this system for eight years. Their published account is at codarity.com/results/eclipse-global.

The shape of it is worth saying plainly. Nothing on your board pays for itself in the quarter it is built. Published proof earns nothing the month it goes live. A list of people who are not ready to buy looks like a cost until the year it becomes the reason you are already on the shortlist.

That is the whole argument for sequencing rather than intensity. Each quarter makes the next one cheaper, because the thing you built last quarter is still working while you build the next one. Eight years of that is a different business, not a better marketing function.

Year by year figures for the Eclipse Global curve are held back until they can be stated exactly. The published case study carries the account in full.

18 · if it is useful

Next step

The obvious next step is a conversation about the first quarter, not the board and not the roadmap. If the next twelve months are meant to come from brand activation contracts, the first quarter is where that starts, and it is small enough to be worth talking about properly.

Codarity is a growth partner for firms that deliver B2B events. We build the system on the board above, one quarter at a time, and we are equally happy being useful on one module of it. If the first quarter is the only part that is ever relevant to YumLoveMore Experience Agency, that is a good outcome and not a failed one.

The Event Engine Programme is the version of this where we build and run the whole board over time. It is one option for the first quarter, not the only shape it can take.