High-end kitchen appliance maker Sub-Zero Group has appointed Huge as its agency of record following an extensive review that started in November last year.

The Brooklyn-based agency will guide brand strategy, creative, and digital marketing for the company’s three brands (Sub-Zero, Wolf, Cove) as the marketer looks to capitalize on consumers' newfound appreciation for their kitchens after the pandemic. The shop will partner with Crossmedia on paid media planning and buying to reach older millennials. The review was conducted with the help of Joanne Davis Consulting.

Brian Jones, director of marketing for Sub-Zero Group, said the company was looking for an agency that could provide breakthrough marketing and had b-to-c and b-to-b experience as well as product marketing experience.

“The two key things, we wanted was a very strategic agency that could look at things holistically," Jones told Ad Age. “The digital background that Huge has, since they started as a digital agency, resonated with us pretty strongly. We did workshops with each of the finalist agencies over the process, and the way that [Huge] was able to stand out and refine their creative work until the end was just amazing.”

The other finalists were not disclosed.

Huge will help Sub-Zero not only market to its core audience but reach older millennials as well since they are “redefining what luxury means,” as they have started “investing into homes and remodeling kitchens,” Jones said.

“In the pandemic, people started to really recognize how much time is spent and the critical nature of the engagement that happens in the kitchen,” Matt Weiss, president of Huge said. "Being able to help [Sub-Zero] transform to that next level and rethink modern luxury, think about their different customers, and the people that they'd be able to impact going forward, is like a dream come true.”

The brand’s previous agency of record was The Richards Group which held the account for over 20 years. Jones gave the Richards Group credit for the work it had done, but said the company was looking for a partner that fit its “business needs and values.”

In October of last year, Richards Group founder Stan Richards made a comment in an internal meeting for then-client Motel 6 that a proposed campaign was "too Black" and threatened to aleniate the marketers's "white supremacist constitutents." 

“Our company embraces the diversity of our customers, employees, and the communities in which we operate, and this deeply held belief is woven into our values and reflected in who we are, from our equal opportunity hiring policies or how we go to market and interact with our employees and customers," said Jones. "We just want the right partners.”

This is the latest of a long list of clients that have moved on from The Richards Group. Brands that have moved on from the Dallas-based agency include Motel 6, Keurig Dr Pepper, Orkin, Advanced Auto Parts, H.E.B. and Shiner Beer.