Vesta - Community Engagement Campaign of the Year

Company: Vesta, New York, NY
Company Description: Vesta is a pioneer in Community Powered Marketing. Our SaaS platform elevates a brand’s digital presence, delivers predictive insights, and transforms consumers into lasting advocates. Hundreds of brands have partnered with us to activate millions of consumers for customer acquisition, loyalty, and sales growth. Founded in 2009, we work with leading brands including Unilever, P&G, Pfizer and more.
Nomination Category: Communications & Marketing Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Communications or PR Campaign of the Year - Community Engagement

Nomination Title: The Power of Community: Vesta's Veggies Made Great Campaign

Veggies Made Great launched their “Plant a Coupon” Mission Campaign via their online brand community powered by Vesta’s all-in-one community software platform in August 2019. The Veggies Made Great Community is a brand-owned community designed to build loyalty, drive engagement, and activate advocacy for Veggies Made Great products, and ultimately increase the lifetime value of their consumers. ​

Veggies Made Great is a natural frozen food brand with a very unique proposition – the first ingredient in everything they make is vegetables. Their mission is to inspire people to love eating veggies by creating the highest quality, remarkably delicious, and nutritionally smart, veggie-rich foods that are ready to eat and available everywhere. As a newer company and challenger brand, Veggies Made Great faced the challenge of standing out among their competitors. Outlining their goals, the brand knew they wanted to connect and communicate with their consumers, tap into a Word-of-Mouth strategy, collect organized and measurable insights, and most importantly, give back to their loyal consumers. With an established and engaged online brand community living on Vesta’s platform, Veggies Made Great knew that there was great marketing power resting within their community of over 8,000 loyal consumers that was waiting to be activated with this campaign.

The Veggies Made Great Community allows the brand’s marketers to efficiently and effectively personalize the relationship with their most passionate fans at scale, inspiring them to amplify brand messaging and evangelism. One example is the “Plant a Coupon” Mission, a creative Word-of-Mouth mission campaign that enabled community participation and inspired members to share the brand and community with others through user-generated content and organic advocacy. Launched in the fall of 2019, the “Plant a Coupon” mission asked community members, who are creatively known as “Veg Heads”, to “plant” discount coupons on product boxes in stores nationwide, and then spread the word on social media by sharing pictures of their in-store actions. Through the gamification factor of the campaign combined with social sharing, Veggies Made Great fostered a “treasure hunt mentality”, engaging community members as well as those who found the coupons on products in-store. And with minimal lead time and creative assets, Veggie Made Great was able to harness its digital relationship into offline actions with major impact at the retail level. The campaign spanned fromAugust 3 - October 31, 2019.

After 4,460 coupons were planted by consumers in stores across the US, Veggies Made Great harvested campaign success, including 92,000+ social reach and a coupon redemption rate that was 30% higher than the industry average. Additionally, the campaign created explosive interest and fun for members. As one member shared, “I told all of my coworkers about the Veggies Made Great products and told them to shop where I planted the coupons. They were so excited about trying the healthy products and loved that I shared some coupons!”

With a deliberate eye toward fun and delight, the marketers at Veggies Made Great optimized the potential offered by Vesta’s platform in creating this campaign, allowing their passionate “Veg Heads” to feel appreciated, understood, and naturally inspired to share their love of the brand. The community’s spirited personality and memorable campaign experience elevated members’ understanding of the brand and forged deeper connections and emotional loyalty. And the good news doesn’t stop there. In just one year, the Veggies Made Great Community has grown its ranks by 58%, with a 43% purchase conversion rate among Members, over 2 million social impressions, and 6,600 reviews generated. This has led to a 20% increase in brand sales since the community launched, a number that will continue to grow as the Veggies Made Great marketers harness their community to establish and elevate their consumer relationships at scale and build lasting loyalty and inspired brand advocacy.

Reference any attachments of supporting materials

The supporting materials demonstrate how the marketers at Veggies Made Great were able to transform a digital relationship into offline actions with major impact at the retail level, driving members in-store to purchase products or “plant coupons.” The “Plant a Coupon” campaign, which strategically tapped into their community’s innovative two-way dialogue and active feedback loop to elevate the level of personalization, engagement, and advocacy, marked a moment of victory for the brand and their community alike. As a whole, the Veggies Made Great Community has provided value to consumers and cultivates a lifestyle rather than pushing a product. With their community, The Veggies Made great marketers have been able to establish one-to-one relationships with their consumers at a scale that would otherwise not be possible.