CONNECTING WITH CONSUMERS Campaign Success…Now, on to the Next! By Jennifer Kyle, Manager of Public Engagement and Digital Strategy jennifer@ontariobeef.com • www.ontbeef.com
T
o say this summer was interesting would be an understatement to say the least! During a normal summer, friends, family and acquaintances gather at all kinds of places to enjoy the sunshine and good company. There is just something about the warm weather that motivates people to be out and about. As farmers, we know the summer also brings a tremendous amount of weather- and time-sensitive hard work, and as a wise person (Steven Lee Olsen) once said, you gotta “make hay while the sun shines!” But even on the farm, the summer weather puts a skip in people’s step and, when the work is done for the day, there are many gatherings of neighbours and friends. With most of that socializing and gathering together off the table this year, not only were we forced as a society to change how we connect and interact with each other, but it also meant we had to pivot our consumer engagement plans to reflect this new reality. Suddenly it didn’t make sense to talk about beef as a food we “gather together” to enjoy. Attending big public events was not an option, and even our social media campaign plans had in-person components we had to go back to the drawing board on. The great news is we adapted and found ways to continue to connect with our Ontario beef consumers and our results have been fantastic to date.
The Ontario Beef Burger Battle The Ontario Beef Burger Battle campaign was designed to celebrate local recipes in the height of grilling season and generate awareness of Ontario beef, keeping it top of mind for our consumers through the summer. The campaign was a burger creation competition between selected food-oriented social media influencers around Ontario (mostly GTA), hosted and judged by Gunnarolla (aka Andrew Gunadie). The influencers were selected based on their location, following and ability to bring a unique burger recipe to life – inspiring our consumers to ask for Ontario beef. Each influencer showcased their unique burger recipe, which was shared through their own channels and through Ontario Beef’s social handles. Social posts encouraged participation, asking fans to share their own recipes with #ontbeefburgerbattle and drove to our website where consumers could find the recipes and learn more about Ontario beef. The competition was all done remotely and a “hub” was created on the ontbeef. ca website to serve as a home for each burger 10
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master’s video creation. All of the recipes are also now available on the hub, and in the Ontbeef.ca recipe database. In the end, it was “Zimmy’s Signature Classic” burger that took top honours, and we also surprised 10 followers who had shared their own burger recipes with an Ontario Beef swag bag - this was very well received. So, how did the Burger Battle do? The short answer is: great! In a nutshell we: • reached 860,000 people, • received 430,000 engagements, • made 3 million content impressions, and • drove 42,000 visits to the website. For context, those 42,000 website visits increased the traffic on our site by 800 per cent and 95 per cent of the visitors were first-time visitors to the site! We learned through the battle that our audience is engaged, and we will continue to capitalize on that by ensuring we always have meaningful calls to action, and by providing value to the consumers.
What’s Next? With the summer campaign behind us, we have now turned our focus to putting some dollars behind the promotion of the store locator feature on the Ontario Beef website. This will lead into our next campaign, which will centre around butchers and butcher shops. As this is an excellent opportunity for anyone selling Ontario beef to take advantage of increased (and hopefully sustained) traffic and exposure, if you or someone you know would like to be added to the locator, please contact Jenn at the BFO office for an application. Over the past few months, the team has been working on some new resources that will be available in the coming weeks. Included are: • A recipe booklet, which replaces the individual cards • A kids’ colouring book, which replaces the dated activity sheet • A general Ontario beef brochure Additionally, as we continue to receive requests for materials that can be used in a retail setting, we are working on a few materials that can be used in-store to encourage customers to ask for Ontario beef. We will communicate details on those items as they become available. We have also been hard at work on a number of new video and photo assets, including a new TESA video, recipe videos, and a virtual-360 video tour of two beef farms (feedlot and cow-calf) that will launch at the virtual Royal. Speaking of the Royal, we will be participating in the virtual Royal Agricultural Winter Fair November 10 -14, so watch for details on how you can “visit” us at our booth! Lastly, please remember that between these updates, the best way to keep up with our current activity is to follow us on our social media channels and check out ontbeef.ca. If you have questions, concerns or ideas, please reach out any time. We are always happy to chat! OB
