The biggest hurdle standing between a baby food company and high velocity sales growth isn't the quality of their product; most baby food companies produce similar—and perfectly good—product lines. The biggest hurdle is getting parents to stick with your brand when all the other brands are so similar, and a different one is on sale each week.
With this in mind, Happy Family came to us with a clearly defined objective: they wanted to be to millennial parents what Gerber had been to the Baby Boomers. That is, the go-to baby food that parents could recognize, trust, and choose over all other options.
To do that, we created a memorable, powerfully emotional campaign that followed up tactically in order to drive sales, all while uniting a disparate product line under one cohesive brand umbrella.
The campaign's first job would be to launch Happy Family's new product line, Clearly Crafted. Clearly Crafted, the first-ever see-through baby pouch, was also Happy Family's first national product launch and an important milestone for a brand that had been acquired by Danone in recent years.
On an emotional level, "This Is Happy" recognizes the ups and downs that make up the net-happiness of family life. Structurally, the campaign was defined by an introductory/educational messaging construct aimed at giving Happy Family a unique, memorable calling card.
The script of the campaign centerpiece, the anthem video, was written entirely with sentences beginning with "This is," as was every piece of campaign messaging, from Facebook and Canvas ads to POS displays. A sequential paid media strategy escalated potential consumers along the path from video viewers to repeat purchasers.
The journey began with the anthem video on Facebook. We targeted users based on a wide variety of demographic, geographic, and lookalike data points. After viewing the anthem, those potential consumers were served a Facebook ad using the same "This Is…" messaging, which would direct to a campaign or product landing page using that theme as well.
Visitors of a webpage would later be retargeted with a digital ad using "This Is…" messaging and driven towards a coupon landing page.
By the time they completed the cycle, a potential consumer had been exposed once to our emotional introduction, then five times to our friendly, familiar brand messaging before downloading a Clearly Crafted coupon to reward purchase intent.
Spurred on by the anthem video, which received over 9M views on Facebook, nearly 10K hashtag mentions on Instagram, and press coverage by outlets like Buzzfeed and Huffington Post, Clearly Crafted exceeded sales expectations at a primary retailer by over 75%, creating a new baseline for units sold/week at the retailer. After only a month on shelves, Clearly Crafted pouches already accounted for 4/5 of the top selling organic baby food pouches. Additionally, the leading Clearly Crafted SKU was the top selling item across all baby food!
As for brand recognition and loyalty, by the middle of 2016, Happy Family had earned the steepest increase in aided awareness amongst all baby food brands, including Gerber. In this same time period, Happy Family also leapfrogged four other brands to become second only to Gerber in a study to determine favorite brand amongst brand buyers.
