Old Bay has an extremely loyal and passionate fanbase in the Chesapeake Bay Area, and we wanted to use this activation to not only drive top of mind pride and usage in this area, but also to share the adoration for the seasoning with crab lovers across the country. An engaging, whimsical Snapchat AR Lens was the perfect vehicle to introduce a heavily loved brand to wider audience segments that were already used to interacting on-platform. Knowing that Snapchat has one of the most positive user experiences of the social platforms due to easily digestible content and lack of comparison-drawing “likes” actions, expanding onto this new program for Old Bay was an easy brand safe choice.
The Lens was targeted to Snapchat users 18-50+ and used in-platform interest audiences such as Foodies, Meme Lovers, Party Goers and Sports Fans. By tapping into engaged and passionate audiences with tangentially related interests, we were able to connect Old Bay with new targets who likely were not aware of the brand and product. Broad, general interest targeting also allowed us to garner maximum reach at efficiency, keeping CPMs low. Expanding the age demographic to 18-year-olds and up allowed us to tap into a younger audience, ready to create their own flavor preferences and brand associations.
By activating on Snapchat, we made use of the platform’s creative team to design an AR Lens that captivated audiences by making them the crab getting doused in delicious Old Bay seasoning. Historically, across Social, we see strong engagement any time we share crab content with our Old Bay audience, inspiring us to activate against Crab Day in the first place. With various engaging ad formats, unique and unduplicated audiences primed to interact, and high share rates, Snapchat was the obvious choice in introducing Old Bay to new targets on a national scale. The high shares and saves also meant that platform users were natural brand advocates for Old Bay, sharing their passion with friends and followers.
This Lens was highly shared, saved, and sent to friends: nearly 172k people either shared the Lens to their story or sent it to friends. At its peak, the Lens had a share rate of 6% (final share rate was 4.5%), about a 200% increase over Snapchat’s 1%-3% benchmark for lenses. This proves that audiences were highly engaged with the content, increasing Old Bay awareness in regions outside the key target of Baltimore/Washington D.C. In fact, the top states reached during the campaign were Texas, California and Florida.
Due to the high share rate, the Lens garnered 971k free impressions, which brought the total impressions count to 4.9MM and eCPM 22% lower than platform benchmarks. The save rate was also high for this campaign at 0.82%, which is also 22% higher than platform norms.
Across the board, the Lens beat benchmarks for Snapchat, a great feat considering this was the first Old Bay activation on the platform. By running the campaign nationally, we built upon the existing passion and love for the seasoning and expanded it to relevant audiences we don’t typically reach in other campaigns. In addition, by targeting a younger demographic, we were able to foster a love of Old Bay with traditionally more impressionable audiences, especially Women 18-24 who shared the Lens most often.
