Nasoya Wrappy Hour: 2011 IMA Award Winner

CATEGORY: Best Web-based Trial Recruitment Campaign
AGENCY: AMP USA
CLIENT: Vita-Soy USA

Vita-Soy USA needed to increase awareness of its Nasoya line of organic, healthy products—especially its new wraps, which consumers were struggling to learn how to use. Primarily known in the tofu category, Nasoya was finding that its brand awareness among general consumers was weak, and that those who had tried the wraps were writing in asking for recipe ideas.

In response, AMP created “Wrappy Hour,” an in-home party concept using the web as a hub for the trial recruitment campaign. Because of its social networking capabilities, the web would stretch a tight budget of less than $100,000.

“We realized that to kick this product up a level, consumers really needed to try it,” says Sonny Kim, senior vice president, digital media, for AMP Agency.

To find women with strong social networks to host the parties, AMP rented 10,000 email addresses of women ages 21 to 64 in 28 states. The correspondence included a qualifying survey that asked questions such as, How often do you entertain? Do you like to cook?, and Do you experiment with food? Individuals were also asked if they had heard of the brand (to mine a good mix of those who had and those who had not).

AMP qualified 100 addresses from the women who replied. “We were very impressed with the response rate,” Kim says. “It was better than anticipated.”

Once accepted, each hostess was required to sign a legal document agreeing to host a party of at least six people (resulting in a total of 600 or more party-goers), to share information about the party and products across their own and Nasoya’s social networks, and to conduct themselves appropriately online.

Hostesses were supplied with a Nasoya-branded party kit that included the wraps, aprons, plates, sauces, a list of fun things to do with a tofu press, coupons, cocktail recipes and a $25 gift card for purchasing additional items they would need to make their appetizers.

The microsite at nasoyawrappyhour.com was available to the hostesses as a place to blog, share recipes, show pictures and talk about their experiences. In total, the site received more than 2,000 visitors and 10,000 page views. Visits demonstrated high levels of engagement, with users spending 4:15 minutes on the site and viewing five or more pages per visit. Almost all the hostesses used Twitter and Facebook to chat about their Wrappy Hour parties and experiences, while the word Nasoya was searched for more than 1,000 times during the campaign period.

The recruitment began in September 2010 and the parties ended just before Christmas. Overall, Nasoya reported an incremental lift during the campaign period.

“We got great brand awareness from the 10,000 initially emailed, as well as the 600 influencers,” Kim says. The hosts and their guests mentioned Nasoya products and their parties and recipes in more than 415,000 social impressions, including seven blogs with ongoing conversations.

To measure the full effectiveness of the promotion, AMP developed a customized data analysis and campaign optimization program that allowed Vita-Soy to better understand the type of content that resonates with its consumers.