Imagined in 1983, NERDS first became known for their tiny, tangy, and colorful candy pieces packaged up in a dual chamber box. Sweet strawberry on one side, grape flavor on the other, NERDS quickly grew to iconic status. Since its debut, NERDS has expanded its product portfolio, with innovation as one of its main drivers.
In 2022, NERDS introduced a new product form, Twist & Mix, that served as an updated version of the dual chamber box. Twist & Mix is a five-compartment package that allows consumers to mix and match NERDS flavors to create their own perfect combinations of flavors, which include Strawberry, Orange, Watermelon, Cherry, and Lemonade. While other brands in the Category were mashing up flavors, Twist & Mix put the power of flavor customization into the palm of Gen Z’s hands.
In a time when awareness was high and consideration fell flat, our team was tasked with creating a Twist & Mix campaign for social media that set out to help increase overall brand sales, grow active consideration from 32% to 35% amongst the general population to drive more frequent purchase/repurchase, and increase relevance by driving trial of Twist & Mix.
This much is clear: people love NERDS. Our research shows that many of those people also have specific favorite flavors or flavor combos. It’s for this group that we wanted to create hype for a brand new NERDS product for our nerdy superfans that let you enjoy your favorite flavors in any combination with a simple twist.
With our Gen Z growth target in mind we wanted to emphasize that, like them, Twist & Mix isn’t defined by one flavor or confined to just one box. With this sweet little device, consumers have the power of flavor customization in their hands, and can create and share their flavors for every moment.
What We Used
All assets drove to new product announcement on Nerdscandy.com.
Influencers - Our selected influencer partners developed videos that showed different combinations in their lives that were all inspired by the way Twist & Mix creates different bold flavor combos. From fashion to food to friends and fancy footwork, our influencers combined unique moves to give Twist & Mix a memorable launch into their followers' hearts.
Lifestyle Video - We created some fun content of our own using a combo of animated NERDS Characters and backgrounds with real creators starring along with the Twist & Mix in the foreground. We targeted Gen Z’ers passionate about movies in one and video games in the other, showing a combo of worlds and scenes that nodded to the fan favorites in each category.
Audio – In the world of audio-only, we focused primarily on flavor, weaving audible tales of colorful characters who created combos of chaos. When it comes to your favorite combinations, it doesn’t matter if anyone else gets it - you do you, nerds.
Animated Video – We developed two Instagram and Facebook sweepstake animated videos to encourage our consumers to guess the Flavor Combo of The Day for a chance to win and participate in a super fun sweepstakes (with fun combination prizes).
We saw results that out-performed our initial expectations:
SALES:
SPOTIFY: Saw a +13pt lift in consideration in podcast spots and a lift in product awareness (+35 pts for Podcast and +13.7pts Audio)
TIKTOK: CPM above benchmark, Video View Rate of 25% (above 20% benchmark)
