The Williams Agency Marketing Archives

Celebrate 20 Years with The Williams Agency!

What does “Marketing with a Mission,” mean to you? At The Williams Agency, community comes first. With a focus on local food, culture, sustainable agriculture, and green business strategy, the Williams Agency uses its services and grassroots strategy to not only engage the community, but build something interactive and sustaining.

Nicola Williams, founder and CEO of The Williams Agency, celebrated her 20th anniversary. Her experience with event planning, marketing, and public relations is unparalleled, and her mark remains visible in the many events and brands seen in Cambridge and Greater Boston. With a strong and experienced team behind her, Nicola and The Williams Agency continue to grow.

I gained the opportunity to work as a Marketing Intern for The Williams Agency for 8 months while in graduate school, and it has been a wonderful blur of food festivals and localvore-friendly events and projects. To give you a taste of the accomplishments of The Williams Agency, here is a tour of the projects I got to participate and work on with the team.

Boston JerkFest

The Boston JerkFest is a Caribbean themed food festival that celebrates Caribbean culture and, my favorite, the delicious and spicy Caribbean cuisine. Whether you want to listen to live Jamaican music while sipping on a coconut, munch on a plate of Jerk chicken, or watch chefs compete for the best jerk dish in Boston, the Boston JerkFest makes everyone happy. The Rum & Brew on Friday night was a new twist this year, and it had a line out the door for two blocks. Unlimited tastings? Yes, please!

Buy Local Trade Show

Farm, restaurant, specialty food vendor, green business, and everything in between! The Buy Local Trade Show involves hundreds of businesses and gives a unique opportunity for businesses to connect, and together, make their work grow. Now, maybe you’ll notice […]

Grassroots Marketing: Building From the Ground Up

Here at the Williams Agency, we have a few strongly held beliefs: we believe in green, we believe in culture, and we believe in local, among other things. This is why grassroots marketing is such a good fit for us. Grassroots marketing is a marketing style that depends on community, connections, and the power of people. Unlike traditional media, grassroots builds by distributing information from the bottom up, starting with small communities to reach a larger audience. Rather than advertising to the masses in hope of information trickling down to thought leaders, we begin with those thought leaders and work our way to the masses.

Grassroots effort relies on people’s passion. Luckily for us, we work for a variety of clients that have causes that people can feel passionately about – whether that be food access, local business, and even sustainable fishing. Creating campaigns for causes that people feel passionately about makes connecting those messages to people a whole lot easier. It also forms long lasting, loyal and deep relationships with the communities we are engaging with on behalf of our clients.

Grassroots marketing can consist of one-on-one conversations, blogging, social media, event outreach, and many smaller communication channels. Really, it’s whatever it takes the reach each person at their level and inspire them with our message or cause. It’s whatever it takes to build a connection and a relationship with people. People who become passionate about something enough talk about it, and share it, and promote it in ways much more effectively than a newspaper ad or a radio spot ever could alone. Grassroots is about creating viral, highly shareable content that moves on its own. These audiences connect with one another and build community.

And that’s our mission. To connect people. To foster relationships, and conversation. To connect those people […]