Building a brand: Cape Pond Ice carves a niche with new strategy
By Richard Gaines, Staff writer, Gloucester Daily Times

So, you think ice is just frozen water?

Well, keep that thought to yourself if you're talking with Scott Memhard.

Memhard has dedicated himself to convincing the public that the ice made at Cape Pond Ice, the family-owned business that began making ice for the fishing industry in 1848, is better, or at least cooler, than any other.

Creating a brand value for one of the most basic commodities might seem a frivolous, if not quixotic, business strategy.

It is neither. In fact, without Memhard's effort to make Cape Pond Ice "the Poland Spring of ice," the company might well be melting away, its upward of $1 million business crushed by the diminished needs of the ever-shrinking fishing fleet and competition from the many larger ice enterprises out there.

"The Perfect Storm" made its logo semi-famous, and the company has tried to cash in with a line of hats, T-shirts and sweatshirts, sold locally and online. Cape Pond has also invested in equipment capable of freezing clear blocks of ice with few imperfections — ice prized by sculptors for its beauty and strength.

The company sends an average of 12 blocks of the ice — weighing a total of two tons — to Foxwoods Casino and Mohegan Sun Casino each week.

Now, Memhard wants people to walk into convenience stores and, not finding Cape Pond Ice bags, complain: "You don't have Cape Pond Ice; why not?"

The right ice matters in Memhard's unconventional business plan, which is based on creative adaptation and distribution, driven by consumer demand specifically for Cape Pond Ice.

Memhard hopes that the campaign — and bit of fame granted the business by the book and movie "The Perfect Storm," which highlighted its essence in commercial fishing — continues to build sales locally and e-mail requests it receives from all over.

But that brings with its own challenges for the business.

Shipping 300-pound blocks of transparent ice is more daunting than the distribution of the shaved ice used to lower temperatures in concrete manufacturing, which has accounted for as much as half Cape Pond Ice's volume during the Big Dig.

Solving problems that have frustrated ice distributors since the advent of trains would mean the company could ship shot luges and sculpturing blocks long distances to campuses from the Big Ten to the PAC Ten and festivals on other continents.

"We're working on a design that can be shipped," he said, "using custom foam insulation."

To fuel the demand, he has developed the message: Cape Pond Ice isn't just better, it's essential for a life worth living.

The company is using that approach in a new promotional campaign produced locally by Chad Carlberg for Bait & Tackle, a company Carlberg owns and runs with partner Pablo Bressan.

The idea is to make sure you begin to think of Cape Pond Ice as an emotional and economic panacea.

"(Memhard) was tickled by the notion of doing ads not only for the left brain but for the right brain," Bressan said. "He gave us free reign."

What emerged was a flight of creativity that puts ice in an unexpected light (and won Bait & Tackle a coveted Telly Award, given to the best commercials in the cable and non-network world).

Only one could be considered conventional, and even it, a narrated whirlwind history of the company, flirts with the sardonic in the passing mention by a way, way "down Maine" voice of a new use for Cape Pond Ice — the "shot luge." Memhard seems excited about the potential for growth in this new product, a molded 150-pound block down which drinks can be poured until they flow icy cold into a waiting cup or glass (or mouth, for that matter), especially if insulation, packaging and distribution problems can be solved.

The "Lemonade Stand" (the Telly Award winner) is a business profile that could have been called "Cape Pond and prosper." Three 10-or-something boys have set up a streetside shop that's going nowhere until they're clued by some savvy, 10-or-something girls that the enterprise needs only to add Cape Pond Ice to warrant dreams of an IPO.

"We solved their problems" is how Memhard, 46, an Amherst College psychology major and erstwhile school teacher, puts it.

There's also promotional spots depicting a frat house that's full of bored slackers until the Cape Pond truck arrives with a glacier's worth of ice with Memhard making a cameo, and a seduction gone wrong when the cube of ice about to be pressed to the lips doesn't prove to be made by the brand.