Finding the recipe for marketing success requires a dash of creativity and a pinch of innovation. We’re here to serve up some savoury takeaways from our ongoing, multi-year campaign with Dainty Rice that will have you rethinking your content strategy.
Dainty’s Search for Fresh Ideas
Projects don’t always follow the recipe, but that’s where the best lessons hide. After working with multiple influencers on a campaign that didn’t quite hit the mark, Dainty gave CT a shout. They were looking for an exciting, content-focused campaign that would:
- 01 Spread the Love for Dainty: Showing off Dainty Rice’s Canadian-milled, affordable, sustainable, and easy-to-make product lines.
- 02 Connect with Rice Lovers – Nationwide: Enticing new consumers in Ontario and Western Canada while maintaining familiarity in Quebec.
- 03 Scatter Grains of Information: Producing and publishing high-quality and engaging content that educates consumers and entertains them as well!
Have a Look at the Results
With the campaign objectives in mind, CT collaborated with Dainty to develop an engaging, video-focused, organic and paid campaign that brought in:
- 1,000,000+ ad views
- 20K+ TikTok organic views (2023)
- 40%+ click-through-rate on TikTok ads
- 892.70% year-over-year increase in users
- 888.82% year-over-year increase in new users
- 1,268.29% year-over-year increase in website sessions
- Continuous ties with Canadian creators!
Here’s how we partnered with content creators to help drive these numbers.
Choosing the Right Ingredients
While a taste test with influencers didn’t bring home the results Dainty Rice was looking for, we proposed producing engaging media without the influencer pricetag using content creators. Let’s take a look at what sets influencers and content creators apart.
What are Influencers?
A person with the ability to influence potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending the items on social media.
Why Some Brands Choose Influencers
Established Rapport: Influencers establish connections with their followers, allowing your brand to tap into an existing audience without starting from zero.
Targeted Reach: Influencers tend to have a moderate-to-large following, allowing your brand to reach a wider and more targeted audience.
Why Other Brands Avoid Influencers
Questionable Authenticity: Some influencers have gained reputations for promoting products or services solely for financial gain, compromising their credibility and your brand’s image.
Lack of Control: Your brand may have limited control over the content your influencers create, leading to messaging inconsistencies or content that doesn’t align with your values.
What are Content Creators?
Someone who creates entertaining or educational material to be expressed through a specific medium or channel.
Why Some Brands Choose Content Creators
Fresh Content Formats: Content creators offer insights into new mediums and formats that may work for your brand across diverse platforms.
Subject Matter Experts: Content creators are experts in specific product or service categories, allowing them to confidently and creatively produce content for your brand.
Why Other Brands Avoid Content Creators
Lacking Reach: Content creators typically don’t have the same large followings as influencers, requiring you to leverage your brand’s existing following or consider paid advertising for amplification.
Access: Lacking the same following as influencers makes experienced content creators simply harder to find when your brand needs them.
Bringing in Creative Flavours
We handpicked and reached out to three Canadian content creators. They delivered five punchy recipe videos, each featuring Dainty Rice products, lending their distinct styles to match the campaign's direction.
Celebrity chef Thomas Keller once said: “A recipe has no soul. You, as the cook, must bring soul to the recipe.” Our creators brought in the soul, filming versatile short-form videos, using flavourful techniques like stop motion and follow-along recipes while highlighting unique recipes and other bite-sized facts about Dainty Rice’s products.
As the campaign started hitting the mark, we did what any sensible marketers would do: we doubled down and ordered a second serving of videos, keeping in mind these three pieces of advice:
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01
Do your research:
Take your time and research content creators. For Dainty Rice, we made sure to only team up with creators who were pros when it came to stylizing and producing content around food! -
02
Get on the Same Page:
Write up a brief and make sure your creators know your expectations and you understand theirs as well. When we chose our creators, we outlined the direction, deliverables, and timelines but always left them room to get creative! -
03
Keep the Conversation Going:
Stay in touch with your creators, but don’t step on their toes. We were open to answering our creators’ questions, hearing their ideas, and relaying them to Dainty for approval.
Going for a Second Helping
The beauty of adopting a content-focused approach in this campaign lies in its ability to produce tasty content that's visually enticing and ripe for repurposing. Every piece of content created served double duty, acting as both paid and organic media to maximize its impact.
What is Content Repurposing?
Content repurposing is a strategy employed by marketers, business owners, and creatives that involves recycling content assets by adapting their format to extend their lifespan and expand their reach!
Here are our five favourite content repurposing ideas to maximize the value of your existing materials:
- 01 Turn Images into Videos: Grab a collection of related from your image bank and compile them into a slideshow-style video to benefit from audiences members who favour this format over traditional stills.
- 02 Splice Up Videos: Turn a one-minute long video into four shorter clips to keep audiences interested with fast-paced and engaging content.
- 03 Create Infographics: Take data and text-heavy content and convert it into digestible infographics using overlay text on graphics or images.
- 04 Use All Post Types: Repost reels as stories, stories as reels, and both as TikTok posts to cover reach audience members on all fronts.
- 05 Share Testimonials and Reviews: Highlight positive reviews and testimonials from clients as social proof to build trust among new potential customers.
In the end…
Collaboration is the name of the game when it comes to working with content creators. We find that creators are excited to try out ideas that challenge the status quo. It’s a winning relationship when you can leverage their platform expertise to create engaging and results-driven content for your audience.
By seamlessly integrating content creators with our researched audience insights, carefully crafted messaging, and strategic AB testing, we breathed life into this campaign’s multi-channel ad approach, resulting in impressive outcomes for Dainty Rice.
