Hitting the shelves in 2011 as the first-to-market frozen Greek yogurt offering, Yasso has since established itself as a dessert disruptor in the category, competing against the most well-known, legacy brands in the space like Nestle, Unilever and more. With its successful track record - leapfrogging many household names in brand rank, and winning the loyalty of dessert lovers across the country - Yasso looked to innovation in 2018 to catapult sales outside of the core summer season. Following months of research and development, and tuning into consumer requests, Yasso's three limited edition seasonal flavors were born.
Pumpkin Cheesecake was launched as a Fall seasonal flavor that hit shelves in September 2018, which would then be swapped out for the Peppermint and Sugar Cookie winter seasonal flavors in November. The primary goal of the campaign was to generate awareness for Yasso's new flavor launch (both in stick bars and pint), with a critical focus on markets with strong product distribution – in this case, Boston – to meaningfully influence product sales. The integrated media campaign was built to generate buzz around the new flavor, which included engagement with a custom Brit + Co content piece, as well as with the brand's social media channels, and to drive people to Yasso's site where they could "find a store" retail location to make a purchase.
The Fall Pumpkin flavor launch was supported by full-funnel media activation aimed at generating awareness and driving sales. The target audience included: shoppers interested in "better-for-you products", health and wellness enthusiasts, fitness enthusiasts, and contextual alignments (millennial women looking for Halloween costume ideas, Halloween party planning, recipes, etc.) - all within markets with strong Pumpkin product distribution. Boston was the target market.
Specific media elements included:
Custom Content: Brit & Co article with amplification on launch day via email, and a feature on the home page, with social amplification the next day.
Native Ads: Amplification of the B&C article to relevant audiences in Boston, serving on premium inventory.
Programmatic Standard & High Impact Display: mobile interscroller and standard display serving to relevant audience segments & contextual alignments, featuring the product and driving to where to buy.
Paid Social: amplification of the B&C article and additional posts, speaking to the product and where to buy, to key audience segments.
Organic Social: amplification of the B&C article + additional posts speaking to the product and where to buy.
Paid Search: support for the product on brand terms via sitelinks, branded pumpkin keywords, and nonbrand pumpkin terms (pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin recipes, pumpkin cheesecake.
The Pumpkin Cheesecake stick bar was on shelf for 18 weeks and generated $240K of retail sales across 3,400 stores, while the Pumpkin Cheesecake pint was on shelf for only 15 weeks and generated $120K of retail sales across 1,600 stores, for a total of $360K incremental retail sales. Yasso's Pumpkin pint was the third fastest moving product out of all seasonal products launched within the Ice Cream and Frozen Novelties category, moving two times faster than Yasso's base pint business. Yasso's seasonal product launch also proved to be incremental business with no cannibalization of the base business, driving 19% YoY growth through increased consumption within the existing consumer base.
Media drove strong YoY site visit growth in Boston, surpassing growth in holdout markets and total US. Boston site visits were up 640% YoY and US site visits experienced growth of 319% YoY. The campaign saw nearly 21.5 million total impressions and 81,700 clicks. The custom Brit + Co article had 20,000 views, and drove 2.8 million impressions. Paid social efforts saw 10.3 million impressions and 58,000 clicks, driving 5,400 "Find a store" button clicks.
Overall, the campaign was extremely successful in generating buzz and sales of the new product.
