An award-winning case study: Bellamy’s Firsts
Bellamy’s Organic was founded in 2004 by a Tasmanian family who wanted to provide nutritious organic food for their children. They are now one of the largest producers of organic baby food in Australia as well as having a significant presence in China and across South East Asia. We began working with Bellamy’s in 2013 and have enjoyed a long and successful partnership together, helped by the fact that Bellamy’s not only have a terrific product, but also a team who are passionate about it succeding.
In late 2016, Bellamy’s Organic presented us with the challenge of reinventing and re-engaging their community, in a way that would increase their brand visibility and ultimately win them more loyal customers.
We embraced this challenge by finding a way to personify and amplify the brand through the voices of the customers Bellamy’s had already helped, as well as those yet to have been touched by the brand.
The campaign was a huge success, delivering results across all of the key metrics and winning two industry awards (but we’ll cover that more later).
This is our story…
The challenge
No campaign is without its challenges, but we/Bellamy’s faced 3 significant ones heading into this campaign.
Challenge #1: Drive awareness of Bellamy’s Organic within regulations
Regulations, including the International Code of Marketing Breast-milk substitutes by the World Health Organisation, govern the way in which products such as infant formula are marketed.
Challenge #2: Win new customers in a highly competitive industry
Despite the regulation, Bellamy’s face a lot of competition, with many brands fighting for supermarket shelf space.
As well as supermarket brand and domestic competitors, two key international players also make up the competition. Nestle and A2 are both global organisations with incredibly deep pockets for branded campaigns that could overshadow our own marketing. We needed to find a way to cut through the noise.
Challenge #3: Find cost-effective ways to engage consumers.
Thought previous campaigns had been successful, Bellamy’s Organic challenged us to drive a lower cost per acquisition. As we believe there’s always a smarter and better way to do things, we were more than up to the challenge.
We embraced these challenges by finding a way to amplify the brand through the voices of Bellamy’s existing customers.
The approach
As with all engagements, we began by taking an in-depth look into the brand and the customer in order to ensure success in the campaign execution.
Delving into the audience
Bellamy’s had built a small yet loyal customer base through their commitment to health and natural Australian ingredients.
Research into their customers, the visitors to Bellamy’s website and their social media followings unearthed, unsurprisingly, that mothers aged 25-34 were the core audience group.
To delve into this audience further we conducted additional research into the market as a whole, looking at device usage, product insights, industry data and more;
From this research, we had a clearly defined target audience. But this is one of the most advertised to audiences in Australia, how could we create cut-through?
Through a combination of social listening and analysing customer reviews on ProductReview, we pinpointed that Bellamy’s customers were ready and willing to share their experiences with the product.
This sparked an Aha! moment.
With Bellamy’s customers willing to share their experiences we decided to turn mothers into brand advocates. What we wanted these brand advocates to do was to share their experiences with the product in a way that would boost Bellamy’s credibility amongst their friends and followers, and effectively say the things that the brand couldn’t say.
To get cut-through with our target market we decided to create a social & content marketing strategy that would:
- Emotively tap into the mentality of a new mother
- Encourage her to engage with the brand
- Address her concerns with content that provided the answers she was looking for
- Educate her on Bellamy’s mission and purpose
Bellamy’s Firsts
Bellamy’s mantra is ‘A pure start to life’.
Through creative thinking, we elaborated on this mantra and arrived at the concept of focusing on parent and baby ‘firsts’.
By conducting further, more specific, research on keyword volume and content virality we were able to select topical milestones that celebrated an infant’s firsts.
We called the campaign ‘Bellamy’s Firsts’, shifting the focus from a transactional message to a transformational one.
Each campaign month had a select theme, enabling us to create:
- Facebook competitions, introducing the theme and encouraging followers to participate by sharing relevant experiences or tips.
- Blog articles, collating user comments which were then shared on social media and via email towards the end of the month.
- Instagram photo competitions, where followers were incentivised to share pictures as well as their stories and experiences for a chance to win prizes from adjacent industries – like department store gift cards, skin care products, or Bellamy’s own products.
The execution
Content was repurposed for maximum long-lasting value
This user-generated-content became collateral that could be used for many months after across multiple channels including; blog content, Facebook galleries, Instagram posts, and email sequences.
We drove brand awareness within the regulations
The campaign was designed and executed within the marketing requirements set by the World Health Organisation.
Earned attention was our focus, and we got it!
In addition to creating content that spoke to real-life examples to help current and potential mothers, the viral nature of this approach enabled Bellamy’s to amplify their reach while keeping ad spend relatively low. This meant that our social media posts gained an additional 1 million impressions on top of those we paid to reach.
We built trust amongst the audience
Bellamy’s were doing exactly what they had set out to do by providing new, expecting and existing parents with the necessary information to give their child A Pure Start to Life.
Bellamy’s were able to show that they were with mothers through all of their ‘firsts’, whether happy or challenging. This helped them to build trust with their target audience during their research phase.
The results
We set out to measure three campaign objectives:
- Brand Awareness
- User Engagement
- Relevant Community Growth
We smashed results at a campaign and business level!
An award-winning campaign
As well as delivering fantastic results, we’re proud to say that the campaign was recognised by the Australian Marketing Institute and we were presented with an Award for Marketing Excellence, in the content marketing category. In their comments the judges noted:
Bellamy’s provided an outstanding example of creative and successful content. An excellent framework of the issue, clear goals and thorough market research provided the framework for an effective digital campaign solution,” AMI said in the program for the event. “The content was creative, emotive and authentic which was essential for establishing compelling brand advocates”.
A few weeks later, the campaign was also recognised by SEMRush as the Best Content Marketing Campaign
Though we’re delighted to be recognised for the work we did on the campaign, it’s worth noting that results such as these would not have been possible were it not for
- A fantastic product which almost literally sold itself
- A strong partnership with marketing and leadership team at Bellamy’s
If you’re planning a big campaign or are looking for help with digital marketing then get in touch and we’ll arrange a time for a chat to see how we can help. It could be your company’s name on the award next time…
Katherine Chalhoub
The aim? To develop campaign work that resonates with mass reach and evokes human connection on a scale that transcends the scope of the status quo.
