For America’s favorite taffy brand, our challenge was simple: drive consideration and sales for Laffy Taffy. Our focus was to engage our target audience, Lovers of Levity, who are Millennials and younger Gen X (A25-44) with kids 6-10 that seek out laughter in their day-to-day lives, during a key sales period: Summer of 2022.
Our superfans were begging us on social media to update our jokes — and they wanted to be a part of it. As one fan put it, “Can Laffy Taffy please hire me to write jokes on the wrappers? I’m so funny.” With some of our on-wrapper jokes dating back to the 70s, it was clear that it was time for a refresh. So we listened and gave them a chance to OWN and MAKE Laffy Taffy history.
At the time, well-known brands, from Budweiser to Time Magazine, entered the Web3 space and leveraged branded NFTs as a way to create a sense of community and relevance with their audience. They were everywhere and consumers couldn't get enough. Known and prized for their rarity and one-of-a-kind nature, we utilized this trending Web3 format to create unique rewards for our superfans that they simply couldn’t get elsewhere.
So we launched The Summer of Laff-ter campaign — Laffy Taffy’s venture into custom NFTs and a joke writing contest. Our approach was straight forward — give fans what they want. Here’s how we brought it to life:
Phase 1: On July 20, we launched a giveaway by turning 15 of our most famous jokes into 120 pun-of-a-kind NFTs that highlighted Laffy Taffy’s flavors and iconic 1970s designs. We developed a custom microsite with trusted Web3 partner Bitski, where fans could claim their prize for free.99 — first come, first served.
Phase 2: On August 15, we partnered with legendary rapper T-Pain to (w)rap our jokes into retirement during a live event at Chicago’s iconic Zanies Comedy Club and invite our audience to write new jokes.
Phase 3: On National Tell A Joke Day (August 16), we launched a contest giving our superfans a chance to put their jokes on our wrappers. A microsite served as our contest hub, supporting joke submission and first party data collection.
Phase 4: On September 16, with T-Pain as our judge, we crowned 100 first prize winners and 1 grand prize winner, totaling 101 (or LOL) and celebrated the jokes that would end up on future Laffy Taffy wrappers.
Across owned, earned and paid, we created custom content to excite superfans and drive NFT collection and joke submission. We also targeted specific media outlets with embargoed outreach and leveraged broader press for mass reach.
Driving over 1.7B+ total impressions (across owned, earned and Influencer), the campaign far exceeded expectations: NFTs sold out in 46 minutes (12x faster than target goal of 6 hours) and Laffy Taffy saw a sizable increase in both sales (48.2%+) and sales velocity (33.5%+) versus the same time the previous year. The joke writing contest generated 6.5K+ submissions and yielded a 3% engagement rate (exceeding benchmark by 2.56pp).
It’s safe to say that our community and press loved it, and now Laffy Taffy has plenty of material for future wrappers.
*Source – IRI Latest 13 Weeks ending 09.11.22.
