The Campaign

We used social media to get people off social media and chatting again in real life by offering them free highly themed cheese 'Catch Up' packs if they put their phone down. This countered the growing phenomenon where people in social situations interact with their phones instead of each other. How did we do it? Targeted social ads engaged our audience at key social times when they were thumbing through their social feed and challenged them to catch up in real life over a Catch Up pack. To receive a pack, people simply clicked on the social ads and ordered via food delivery service Foodora, which delivered the pack to their door within 30 minutes. The highly crafted pack itself contained cheese, a wooden cheese board and knife, crackers and for those who had forgotten how to spark a real-life conversation, a pack of conversation-starter cards.

The Brief

1. Overall campaign execution budget - $204k AUD 2. Budget breakdown: Production - Advertising content and Catch Up Packs: $60k AUD Delivery partnership (including logistics & fulfilment of packs): $105k AUD 3. Paid media budget: $39k AUD

Creative Execution

Highly targeted media and a partnership with food delivery service Foodora put our cheese packs in the hands of our target audience at a key social time – weekend afternoons between 2-6pm. Here's how: Over 5 consecutive weekends in Australia’s two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, we set up ‘roving delivery stores’ to disperse our Catch Up packs. Facebook and Spotify ads were then geographic, demographic and time targeted to reach our core audience within these zones. The creative executions (film and display ads) featured messages that dramatised mobile addiction and encouraged our audience to put down their phones to catch up ‘in real life’ over Cracker Barrel cheese. Clicking the ads linked to Foodora to order a Catch Up pack, which was delivered within 30 minutes, completely free of charge. Moving the stores each week required nimble store logistics management and weekly adjustment to localise media targeting and creative.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

Our campaign activity generated over 59 pieces of media coverage. In a country with 25 million people and a target audience of 5.2 million, our social activity reached 4.1M people and generated 35,792 likes through Facebook. Our small paid media budget ($39,000 AUD) delivered 776,000 Facebook mobile ads and 229,142 Spotify ads. Aggressive media and creative optimization drove effectiveness e.g. Facebook click through rate improved by 91% and cost per click reduced by 51% over the campaign. Cracker Barrel’s social following doubled on the back of 43,000 organic video views and 1,200 comments/shares/reactions. Overall, we reached over 71% of our target audience during the campaign. Among those reached, approximately 21% of people (76,384) engaged with the campaign (interacted with an ad/commented on social media/ordered a pack). Most critically, we encouraged over 14,000 people* to put down their phones, enjoy some great cheese and have a real-life conversation.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

The Cracker Barrel cheddar cheese brand was previously purchased by an older audience of 50+. To capture a younger audience, who had no connection with the brand, we needed to create an idea that literally delivered the product into their hands in order to show them what they'd been missing out on. We did this through a contextual activation that used social media, an online food delivery service and a highly themed and bespoke product pack that gave our audience an immersive brand experience.

Data showed Cracker Barrel purchasers skewed older, but volume growth was from ‘everyday entertaining’ occasions and younger consumers, which led us to define an experience driven younger audience, ‘the millenially minded’. Lifestyle analysis showed they were highly socially active (e.g. dining out, having friends over) but these activities became more home centred (versus outdoorsy) over winter months. Media usage skewed heavily mobile internet/social media. Media impact analysis identified the most influential touchpoints as samples/brand experiences (owned), partnerships (shared), friends/family conversations (earned) and store promotions (paid). Our challenge was how to engage our audience who spend most of their time on their mobiles in social media to get them off social media? The strategy - enhance existing get-togethers by using the lure of cheese and crackers to create conversations IRL (in real life). The vehicle - a brand experience leveraging a partnership promoted via mobile social media.