Back-to-school season is a key sales drive period for KIND Snacks. In 2024, aligned with the back-to-school season, KIND launched a new product line called “KIND Kids” – school-friendly bars made with 100% whole grain oats, making it an easy choice for parents and with tasty flavors like chocolate chip and blueberry muffin, beloved by kids – a true win-win for everyone.
In approaching launch efforts, KIND recognized how cluttered the media landscape can be during the back-to-school season. Not only is it hard to cut through during this heavy advertising season, but KIND also observed an opportunity to rise above overly transactional and expected “get ready for school” messaging. Consumer insights showed that over half of parents of kids under 18 agree that the back-to-school season is the most stressful time of year.
This staggering statistic served as the unlock to the unexpected approach for the Brand: KIND embraced authenticity and relatability and leaned into addressing what the target consumer, parents, are feeling during the pressurized back-to-school season.
That’s why KIND launched a national campaign with two iconic moms, Kristin Cavallari and Tori Spelling, because, with eight kids between them, they know how tough the transition is from summer break to getting back into the classroom. The campaign aimed to help alleviate the stress parents face during back-to-school by spotlighting them as the true heroes during this transitional time of year through nostalgia and humor and by offering an easy solution for their kids’ lunch boxes: KIND Kids bars.
To drive awareness, KIND had to cut through the time of year with cultural relevancy and drive fandom with parents, specifically KIND’s #1 target, the Reliant Parent – millennial and Gen X parents who seek a balance of nutrition and taste to meet the standards of themselves and their kids.
KIND dug deep into the cultural trends and landscape and saw that this audience often turn to nostalgia and kid-ulting content as an escape from stressful realities. In fact, millennials gravitate towards nostalgia the most with 47% feeling nostalgic about the pop culture they grew up with.
Not only are parents turning to social media as an escape from reality, but they are also often seeking tips, hacks and even freebies to make parenting just a little bit easier - 59% of 25–39-year-olds say they’ll try a new brand just because they have funny or unique social media content. So, KIND made KIND Kids even more accessible to young families everywhere by leveraging its relationship with DoorDash to provide free samples of KIND Kids products to 30,000 consumers in 13 national markets that over-index in young families to drive additional trial of the new products.
Therefore, the unexpected pairing of nostalgic TV-stars turned famous parents, Kristin Cavallari and Tori Spelling, generated a surprise & delight viewing experience for our key audience. Within our content, we intentionally recreated iconic TV moments with a twist and thereby authentically inserted KIND into pop culture while driving our higher-order objective of launching the new KIND Kids line.
Launched on August 14, just as families were finalizing back-to-school shopping and getting in gear to return to their routines, our integrated 360 campaign was social and earned-first by design to generate mass engagement and awareness of KIND Kids with our Reliant Parent audience across various touchpoints:
The KIND Kids Nostalgia campaign was the brand’s most successful celebrity partnership and product launch campaign to date. In total, the campaign social assets generated over 17 million views.
The nostalgia-filled, humorous content approach resonated deeply with our target audience, as shown by some key stats:
While most parents are served very transactional back-to-school content and product offerings, KIND tapped into an emotional truth for parents – it’s a challenging time of year – and took this insight to connect with them and create a truly viral moment to launch KIND Kids.
