UNDERSTAND
H2M
h2m.biz
320 5th St. N, Fargo
701-237-4180
"Hey, honey, you want to go
out to eat tonight?"
"Yeah, let's do that."
"Okay, great, what are you
hungry for?"
"I don't know."
"Steak?"
"No."
"Mexican?"
"Yeah, that sounds good."
"Okay, well where do you
want to go?"
Dave Hanson, CEO and
president of Fargo advertising
agency H2M, wants you to
consider this hypothetical
conversation for a moment. It's
an exchange that takes place
thousands of times every day
across the Fargo-Moorhead
area, but unless you own a
restaurant or work in marketing
"The first thing is, you have
to be in what we call the
'considered set,'" says
Hanson, whose agency has
worked with area restaurants
and bars for years. "There's a
set of restaurants you'll go to,
and there's a set you won't
even consider because they're
not a part of your habit."
It's that most fundamental of
tasks, getting a restaurant's
name in people's heads and
making it an option for their
patronage, that Hanson and his
team specializes in, and it's one
of the reasons why area pizza
and Mexican joint Zorbaz chose
H2M to handle its marketing
roughly 12 years ago.
While Zorbaz opened its first
spot in Detroit Lakes, Minn.,
in 1969 and has been a staple
in the lakes area for decades,
they were a one-location
operation for many years. And
when they felt that their growth
– they now operate 11 stores
across Minnesota – began to
exceed their internal marketing
capabilities, they hired an
agency that could carry on the
fun, irreverent brand Zorbaz
had spent years creating.
IDENTIFY
Where agencies sometimes
have to spend significant time
and resources researching and
identifying the target market for
a product or company, things
were relatively straightforward
for Hanson and his H2M team
when they took over day-today marketing operations for
the restaurant.
"Here's the thing about
Zorbaz," Hanson says. "It’s
a really broad base, because
they'll open at 11 in the
morning, and it's everybody
from working people for lunch
and then all the way into
dinner. And then at 9p.m., it
turns into a whole different
animal. It turns into more of
a nightclub, with music and
dancing.
"It's funny because (former
Zorbaz owner) Tom (Hanson)
and his son, Cole, they'd
always had a discussion as to,
are we a pizza shop or a bar?
And they'd discuss it back
and forth – because they each
had their own opinion