Challenge
National frozen brand Edwards® Desserts wanted to raise awareness among its target of social-media-savvy unapologetic indulgers. But following the 2016 Presidential election, the social space was anything but social. Tensions were high. Sides were being taken. It was hard to find peace, especially online, when it seemed there wasn’t much anyone could agree upon. How could a frozen desserts brand find a way to bring peace and joy back to the social space?
Idea
Invite people to freeze the negativity for one day — National Pi Day. Instead of sharing a piece of their mind online that day, Edwards encouraged people to replace the negativity with a “Piece Offering.” Edwards gave people the tools to make it easier to share peace over a piece of pie by creating and sending personalized, digital Edwards Piece Offerings to friends, family or frenemies at Facebook.com/EdwardsDesserts. In addition to creating social piece offerings, Edwards used Pi Day to monitor and intercept people’s online arguments with piece offerings of witty comebacks and coupons for free pie. Edwards partnered with “Life in Pieces” star and pie enthusiast Betsy Brandt to be the campaign spokeswoman, participating in an Access Hollywood interview, a Twitter party and shared her own piece offerings on her social channels. Additional celebrity brand fans including Brooke Burke and Trista Sutter also took the time to share an Edwards pie piece offering on their social channels. Edwards partnered with more than 30 bloggers to share a digital piece offering with Edwards to amplify the message to their fans and followers.
Results
Edwards ate up a significantly larger slice of the awareness pie than anticipated, surpassing its 33.9 million impressions goal by 365 percent — in just one day. The 157.7 million total impressions included an “Access Hollywood Live” segment with Betsy Brandt, three celebrity partner postings, 16 million Twitter party impressions, 31 blogger stories, 45.2 million organic online conversations and 64.3 million influencer impressions. Net sentiment was 99 percent positive.