Make that marketing budget spread

Stretching budget is never more important than when it comes to driving awareness in a meaningful way. 

So when Pip & Nut was offered the opportunity to produce a cookbook, they didn’t just say yes, they asked themselves ‘how could we make this bigger?’

They reached out to Selfridge’s PR and marketing department and ended up with a pop up event that secured them 220 pieces of coverage in just 6 weeks. 

Last year Jessie Kenneth, Pip & Nut’s Senior Brand Manager joined us for a How we do marketing chat where she shared more on their approach to brand building last year.

We’ve squirrelled away 6 of our favourite nuts of wisdom below.

1. Embrace the power of the free sample

Pip & Nut were so convinced of the power of sampling that they built their signature event around it.

The Toast Bar is a pop up event that has hugely helped on their way to success  . Using a distribution point as a base, they’d target local offices or events with the experience and let people go to town on the product.

As a result, they’ve secured 1,000,000 shoppers in the UK, with 100,000 of those being superfans who buy their product 4x more than the category average.

That, and the fact that 72% of their sales are incremental to the category suggests that there’s a lot of power in sampling.

2. Create Instagrammable experiences

So, the Toast Bar is great for sampling, but how do you make it memorable and squeeze maximum value from it?

The look and feel of their events is designed to make them as shareable as possible. They make sure their handles and hashtags are clearly visible so they get the earned media from the event, but also get User Generated Content (UGC) when people get home and want to show off their perfectly stacked peanut butter pancakes, or artfully decorated porridge bowl.

Thinking Instagram first also informed their approach to gifting. They created highly aesthetic gift bags that look like live animal carriers, and have a ‘May contain squirrels’ warning on the side. Something that people would immediately want to share. 

3. Fuel the PR machine

Pip & Nut creates new limited edition products on a roughly 9 month cycle in part because it means that PR, journalists, and influencers always have something new to talk about .

Awards can also play a huge role in feeding the media machine. Whether it’s foodie specific or female entrepreneurship awards, getting your name out there can be a huge boost for PR- especially in the early days.

4. Target micro-communities

When Pip & Nut were set to have a Toast Bar at a Nike event, they made sure to gift their packages to a number of different Nike ambassadors knowing that there was likely to be crossover in their audiences. 

If you want to break into a particular community, in this case, fitness focused people who are conscious about their diets, using this kind of targeting is a really powerful way to make them feel as if the whole world is talking about your product . And no one likes FOMO.

5. Focus on your objectives

In 2017, Pip & Nut launched Pipnics, an experiential/sampling campaign with the aim of providing 100,000 samples and being a best in class experiential event.

The result was something that worked, but it didn’t quite reach the highs the company was hoping for as they were forced to skimp on certain elements, rather than going all out where it mattered.

Use online tools to inform your strategic focus

Though the weighting has shifted, the central pillars of Pip & Nut’s marketing strategy remains the same.

They use Attest for short term surveys and awareness projects. Whilst ProQuo AI helps them measure always on awareness and where they’re standing across 12 key drivers .

Working closely with these platforms allows them to shift the focus of their marketing activities to meet their needs. 

Right now their focus is trial, so they’re using a brand new tool to help on that front. Bazaarvoice integrates with websites and pulls and displays UGC. They’re able to convert new shoppers by showing them how much consumers love their product. 

If you’d like to hear the talk in full, it’s just a click away.