Objectives

For Family Dollar's Recipe Challenge Campaign, the objective was to bring awareness to the variety of food items available at Family Dollar, and in turn increase food category sales. To do this, Family Dollar took a unique approach, by using the strategy of running a contest and sweepstakes concurrently. Enlisting the help of ten influential food bloggers, Family Dollar hosted a recipe challenge, where each blogger created an entire meal using only $15 worth of ingredients from Family Dollar, with fans helping choose the winner. Simultaneously, Family Dollar ran a sweepstakes on Facebook and Twitter where fans and followers could enter to win one year's worth of groceries. Once entered in the sweepstakes, entrants could then vote for their favorite recipe by sharing it on social media. The strategy here was to achieve strong engagement with consumers by offering creative recipes, and a very valuable incentive for participation. The outcome: two bloggers were chosen as the winners of the recipe challenge, and had the opportunity to shoot a promotional video, cooking their winning recipes with celebrity chef Pat Neely. Family Dollar was able to achieve a deeper connection with people, showcasing how the products that they carry can create a fun, delicious, and very affordable meal. This resulted in over 43,000 registered participants and more than 135 million impressions.

Strategy and Execution

The Recipe Challenge should win this category because Family Dollar took a unique approach that proved to be successful with this campaign: running both a contest and sweepstakes concurrently. Family Dollar's goal here was to bring awareness to the food selection in its stores, and show that consumers can create entire meals from their offerings. To accomplish this, Family Dollar engaged in the following:

• Appointed restaurateur and celebrity chef Pat Neely as the face of the promotion. This gave consumers a familiar face and expert insight.
• Recruited ten food bloggers who were tasked with creating meals and recipes using exclusively ingredients from Family Dollar. The idea was to position its stores as a 'one-stop-shop' for family meal preparation
• Limited the meal budget to $15 via Family Dollar gift card. By doing this, bloggers could show how inexpensive it is to shop for food at family dollar, and how creative they could be with their recipes
• Allowed fans and followers on social media to share their favorites recipes. This gave Family Dollar a sense of which types of foods were more popular, and helped chose two winners, who went on to film a promotional videos where they showcased their recipes alongside chef Pat Neely
• Promoted engagement by running a sweepstakes simultaneously. Before sharing their favorite recipes, people were entered to win a year's worth of groceries. There was also a referral system, where entrants were awarded additional sweepstakes entries if they got someone else to enter.

The system of having a sweepstakes run along side a contest proved to be a success. The Recipe Challenge campaign received 131K promotion visits with 43,142 registered participants, and 509K engagements. This supports the notion that people will interact when an attractive contest and promotion meet a brand with consumer value in mind.

Media