The objective: To raise awareness of 2 newest flavours in the Sun Mix range.
Agency: The Storyteller
The insight: Consumers are more likely to remember a product when they have to vote or pick a team.
The story
The Sun Mix Snack Off. Are you Team Island Berry Coconut or Team Granola Yogurt Crunch?
July 2023, Sun Mix had recently introduced its 2 newest items - Granola Yogurt Crunch and Island Berry Coconut.
With raising brand awareness in mind, the team and I proposed having a snack off, in which our audience would essentially get to vote for their favourite team.
Influencer driven
The Sun Mix brand typically invests in influencers and content creators to drive its social media content. In keeping with that theme, we approached 8 Trinbagonian influencers and divided them into 2 teams with four members each.
The influencers were carefully selected based on two criteria:
Are they a strong content creator?
Are they personable?
We looked for strong content creators with proven records of dynamic and engaging editing styles. For this promotion we had very tight deadlines. With voting each week and a weekly winner, it meant that the influencer videos needed to be ready by a very specific time.
Working with influencers who have a proven track record of strong content creation means a quicker turnaround time.
Having strong content creators means not only quality content but it also means the team and I will likely spend less time reviewing and going back and forth on the influencer's edit because we know what to expect from them based on their portfolio.
For this campaign, it was also important to me that the influencers we selected had a strong personality.
If you truly want to take advantage of the reach an influencer has, you need to allow them to be authentic.
If they are not authentic to their brand and personality, the content will not resonate with their audience, thus defeating the purpose of the collaboration.
If a creator is not known for usually speaking on camera, we took them off the list.
It would immediately be inauthentic to their brand to be a part of a campaign like this. To capture the playful rivalry we wanted for the snackoff storyline, we needed persons who were comfortable talking on camera and would have been good at improvising banter with their opponent.
Building a story
To kickstart the campaign, we took advantage of one of the gym samplings Sun Mix was executing at the time and had the first faceoff take place there. The first two influencers went through the gym to recruit persons to join their respective team.
Me to the team: "What if, while they are at the sampling to recruit the public, we have a cameo by the next pair of influencers?"
Bless The Storyteller team, they obliged with yet another last minute creative edit.
This provided us with an opportunity to build the story of the snack off. The second pair of influencers, rather than seemingly joining the snack off arbitrarily were now given a jumping point and could respond to the first influencers' videos. Just as you naturally would with TikTok or Reels.
We crafted a domino effect.
Doing it this way also provided an Easter egg for the audience's interest to be piqued if they came into the snack off half way. Each week, as influencers joined the challenge, by alluding to the past content, persons were more likely to go in search of the older videos in the series.
REWARDING engagement
In addition to raising awareness, it was important to the Sun Mix team that there be active community engagement throughout the campaign.
Each week, the two influencers facing off would be from relatively similar industries. The influencers were directed to end their video with a call-to-action to encourage persons to join their team by voting for their video by a specified date to help the team (either Granola Yogurt Crunch or Island Berry Coconut) win a point for that week. If the video got more votes than their opponent by the end of the week, one of their voters had a chance to be randomly selected to win a Sun Mix package.
While organic engagement is ideally what you are aiming for, we chose to incentivize engagement by adding something for users to win at the end of each week.
Adding prizes, whether weekly or at the end of the promotion, is one way to reward participants for engaging with and sharing your content.
A small incentive, such as giving away product, could also be a workaround for tighter budgets where you may not necessarily be able to invest as heavily in boosting content, by directing persons to take a particular (trackable) action for a chance to win something.
The finale
How do you close such a campaign? Anticipating the momentum of interaction we would get from the campaign, the team and I discussed giving our storyline a strong finish.
As with any story, it is important to have a conclusion to reinforce the message you are trying to convey.
We decided this would take the form of a "battle royale" featuring the two opposing teams. We arranged for the two teams to have a face-off. A grand finale in which both teams came face-to-face in a dramatic tug-of-war.
The results? See for yourself...
We aimed to create a piece of content that was both entertaining and informative for consumers.
The spinoffs
One of the things I loved about this campaign - the adaptability of the concept.
Having a strong core concept created the foundation for versatility.
At a trade show, we had an interactive poster designed so that persons could vote between the two flavours by doodling a sun in the team colour.
At events, across the region, we engaged influencers within the respective markets to recreate their version of the recruitment video. They would approach attendees at key events and get them to try the two new flavours and vote for their favourite on the spot. This created the perfect opportunity to capture consumption and feedback from the public. Any of these activations could also be easily be replicated for trade sampling executions in-store as well.
Creating a strong theme provided the foundation we needed to branch off into multiple versions, while still allowing our various teams to keep the messaging consistent - "We have two new products for you to enjoy."
What did we learn?
Collaborate with strong content creators to create dynamic content that is mutually beneficial for both brand and content creators, rather than asking them to create content that would be inauthentic.
Build a story that piques natural curiousity from the audience, entertains and clearly conveys the message you are trying to drive.
Build community. At the heart of it, social media is a space where people love to feel like they are part of something bigger. Creating conversation around your product or service is one way to create brand loyalty.
Where possible, reward participation to incentivize audience engagement.
Adapt. Be clear about your key communication and use that cornerstone to find ways to adapt your initial campaign for other areas of your marketing.
This is where creativity meets strategy for your business marketing solutions.
