Sour Patch Kids had one goal in 2015 - to increase awareness via reach, measured by impressions, amongst its core demographic (teens) during key candy purchasing moments throughout the year, in a way that is relevant and authentic to their behavior. To do that, we tapped into a strong key insight - teens were talking non-stop on social media about how sour it is to be single on Valentine's Day. VaynerMedia brought this key insight to life on social media channels with our sour-then-sweet messaging, making singledom a sweet celebration!
Sour Patch Kids knew what teens were talking about during Valentine's Day (being single) but needed a place to talk about it with them. VaynerMedia identified Wattpad, a new social media platform for up-and-coming writers and the world's largest community of mobile readers, to connect with our teen demo. Of the 42MM monthly active users, teens are the fastest growing segment on Wattpad. Sour Patch Kids became the first U.S.-based CPG brand to partner with Wattpad and engage with teens who were reading and writing about love, or lack thereof. Together, Sour Patch Kids and Wattpad hosted a sour-then-sweet love story-writing contest.
We commissioned three popular teen writers on Wattpad, Katarina Tonks, Lindsey Summers and Rachel Knight, who had the right audience we needed to get our message out. They each created original sour then sweet love stories and asked fans to submit stories of their own. This highly engaging and relevant campaign was cross-promoted across Sour Patch Kids' social media channels.
To recognize - and celebrate - these aspiring teen writers, we leveraged Sour Patch Kids' brand equity to promote the winning story, Irresistible, through an animated video on Facebook and Instagram, at a time when Facebook Video was over-indexing and Instagram had recently released native video functionality. The story was also promoted on Wattpad's homepage for new readers to discover and further drive awareness for the Sour Patch Kids brand during Valentine's Day.
To further amplify, VaynerMedia enlisted 18 social media influencers to create original content highlighting the joys of singledom. This generated a high volume of cross-platform conversation, proving that Sour Patch Kids is a brand that truly resonates with teens.
This month-long campaign was a sweet success for the Sour Patch Kids brand, resulting in:
30,012,236 impressions
350 total contest entries
18.9K+ followers on the Sour Patch Kids Wattpad account in one month
249K total story reads on three commissioned Wattpad writers' stories
1.2MM+ engagements on influencer content
2K+ uses of campaign hashtag
Earned media coverage in AdWeek and MediaPost's Engage: Teens
