The Almond Board of California (ABC) recently saw a great opportunity to build awareness of California almonds with ABC’s U.S. female consumers by launching an advertising campaign around the Federation of Association Football (FIFA) Women’s World Cup, held earlier this year in France. ABC engaged one of the women’s team’s leading players, Julie Ertz, to make the campaign as impactful as possible, as Ertz appeared in advertisements during the World Cup.
ABC’s advertisements featuring Ertz highlight the six grams of protein packed in a one ounce serving of almonds and the energy those almonds provide throughout the day.
The Almond Board’s advertisements featuring Ertz were shown during select games on Fox Sports and FS1. Ads also ran on YouTube, ESPN’s Golic & Wingo show, the ESPN mobile app and on the California Almonds Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts. By promoting these advertisements through multiple mediums on multiple social platforms, the Almond Board U.S. marketing team was able to reach its consumer base with a sort of 360° surround sound that shared the California almonds message from every angle.
“Working with Julie Ertz to capitalize on this special sporting event allowed for a great cultural connection and integration for California almonds, and increased the popularity of almond snacking,” said Becky Jeffers, manager of North America Marketing at ABC. “Seeing all the positive response through social media really confirmed that we had a winning campaign that allowed us to effectively spread our message about the benefits of almonds.”
Here’s how ABC’s Women’s World Cup advertisements performed:
- 51.5 million impressions were achieved by covering the ESPN.com and ESPN mobile app’s home pages with California almond ads.
- Visitors spent, on average, over three minutes on an Almond Board webpage dedicated entirely to content created with Ertz. This average time is more than double that spent on other Almonds.com pages and means that page visitors spent an above-average amount of time interacting with this content.
- The general public published 378,000 tweets about California almonds between June 7 and July 9, a 32% increase over the previous data period.
- 222 million impressions and 64 million video views were generated through paid social media across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and YouTube.
The Almond Board also earned notable coverage highlighting Ertz’s love of almonds, including content in Forbes Online, Hollywood Life, Marie Claire Online and other top-tier outlets.
For more information on ABC’s U.S. marketing efforts, as well as those across the world, attend The Almond Conference on Dec. 10-12 at Cal Expo in Sacramento. Registration is free and open to all industry members. Visit AlmondConference.com for more details.
