Frozen novelty treats are a crowded, competitive, and evolving +$4.9B annual segment, dominated by national multiline majors (Unilever, Nestle) and private label brands also vying for freezer space. Bomb Pop’s historic media spend couldn’t compete with our large national rivals, so we needed to take a smarter approach.
Already a preferred summer treat for teens and tweens, we wanted to move beyond limited occasion purchase by deepening relevance with the Gen Z audience. Our main goal was to amplify Bomb Pop’s cultural status beyond Food & Beverage to take its place alongside the most iconic tween lifestyle brands, ultimately driving sales.
To break into culture, we did extensive research to understand the audience in a deeper way, and what we uncovered was not only something to celebrate but something that connected to the very DNA of the Bomb Pop brand and product. What makes Tweens unique and special is how they refuse to pick a lane and lean into one way of being; this is the most multi-faceted, culturally diverse, gender-fluid, and widely creative generation that has learned to embrace who they are, rather than try to pick a box. Just like the product, which has three flavors in each pop, our Tweens are #NotOneThing. Now the question was, how to bring this to life in a meaningful way.
In order to reach our audience in an authentic way, we need to let them lead. We couldn’t be a brand telling tweens and teens to be authentic, they were already doing that. We needed to be a brand that celebrated and elevated all the ways Gen Z were being authentic and true to themselves.
To do this we used a TikTok Hashtag challenge in a totally new way: to celebrate tweens across the country and inspire them to live out their multidimensional and unique truths, passions, identities, and talents. As digital and social natives, our tween/teen audience grew up learning how to express every side of themselves in fun, creative, and interesting ways, so we decided to create the first awards show EVER on TikTok, the #BombPopAwards.
We launched the award show with a TopView takeover unit, introducing the concept to all of TikTok with a video from one of Gen Z’s favorite influencers, Brent Rivera. Of course, just one influencer wouldn’t be enough to break through to this audience, we needed to cast a wide net so we could appeal to the diverse interests of Gen Z, so we enlisted the help of five other TikTok influencers who embodied #NotOneThing and could authentically connect with our Gen Z audience: Reif Harrison, Mckenzi Brook, Drake McCain, Yasmine Sahid, and Jenna Bandy.
Gathering submissions through our sponsored hashtag challenge and influencer posts, we invited fans to show us every side of themselves for a chance to win up to $15K, with our influencers sharing their own submissions and highlighting winners with duet videos, we celebrated the talent and diversity of our audience on their favorite stage. Ultimately, we awarded 9 people $1K as our daily winners, and our grand prize winner got $15K and a call from Brent!
Not only was the campaign effective in celebrating the authenticity of tweens and teens, it also drove the bottom line objective we set for ourselves at the beginning of the campaign: to take our place as an iconic lifestyle brand amongst tweens, ultimately driving sales. The Bomb Pop Awards itself played an important role, ultimately generating 11.2 billion views, 24 million hashtag challenge page views, and 1.9 million video submissions.
But most importantly, we achieved a 12% sales increase, literally maxing out the factory.
