For decades the model remained the same. Now the rules are being rewritten.
The commercial manufacturing category has long relied on a selling strategy that is still relatively intact across the Fortune 500 today: Invite clients to a showroom at headquarters flick on a PowerPoint and do your best to get visitors to sign on the dotted line before they head back to their corporate office.

With the second leg of a 34-city tour just underway Del Monte’s 9Lives brand is savoring the results from the first wave of the campaign. The brand’s Daily Essentials cat food line reported an eight percent boost in bagged food sales since starting the campaign plus a five percent spike in canned food sales a major jump for its category.
 

Amstel Light is spending the winter wooing skiers and celebrities via a series of Après Ski Lodge events. The Heineken USA brand is taking over lodges and bars in Telluride CO and Park City UT in February and March creating environments that resemble a Swiss ski chalet. The campaign is a cold-weather complement to Amstel’s portfolio of golf and culinary events.
 

Warner Bros. Consumer Products is promoting the Speedy Gonzales character to young skateboarders with a tour hitting skate parks in 12 markets.
 

DaimlerChrysler’s Jeep leveraged its presenting sponsorship of a pro snowboarding competition in New York City last week by creating a structure that used a Jeep as a prop for part of the competition.
 
During one segment of the event which was Thursday at Union Square snowboarders descending the rail actually rode over a Jeep Wrangler Unlimited.