The Almond Board of California (ABC) Global Market Development team recently coined a new term – “almonding” – as part of its bold, new UK advertising campaign, “Do You Almond?” “Almonding” or “to almond” means to do something in an improved, impressive or amazing fashion. This term and the larger campaign aim to celebrate and recognize those who fuel themselves with almonds and show how almonds help keep those individuals on their A-game throughout the day.
The integrated “Do You Almond?” marketing campaign launched in January 2020 with an advertising take-over in London’s busiest train stations, one which features Europe’s largest digital out-of-home screen (London Waterloo station). The campaign also includes TV advertising, podcasts, online and social media advertising, and content developed by influential social media content creators who develop attention-grabbing content that is distributed to their hundreds and thousands of social media followers.
What role can content creators play in increasing awareness of California almonds?
According to ABC’s Director of European Marketing and Global Public Relations Dariela Roffe-Rackind, “Content creators feature heavily in our UK marketing campaign because they’ve proven to be a valuable, effective and credible vehicle for connecting California almonds with our target consumers in an authentic way.”
The “Do You Almond?” challenge
As part of this campaign, ABC selected 12 influential content creators from across the food, fitness, family, lifestyle and entertainment sectors and challenged them to take part in the “Do You Almond?” challenge. The individuals were vetted against a stringent set of criteria to ensure they fell within the campaign’s target audience, were legitimate almond ambassadors, had good audience reach and engagement, and, importantly, were “on brand” – fun, excited, and even sometimes a bit quirky when talking about products they like and use.
For the challenge, content creators were asked to develop videos that show two scenarios: one before “almonding” and another after “almonding.” The goal of the challenge was to get UK consumers thinking about the natural power of almonds and all the ways almonds can improve their day by making almonds memorable through a variety of fun content created by leading influencers. The following are a few examples of the content made:
- Celebrity mom blogger and YouTuber, Anna Saccone, created a very relatable video: In the first, pre-almonding scenario, she is seen tearing her hair out while home-schooling her four children during the pandemic lockdown. In the second, post-almonding video, she is able to transition from chaos to calm after snacking on almonds to get her through the day.
- In his video, content creator and soccer freestyler Ben Nuttall is struggling with his moves and tricks before almonding, but post-almonding he’s nailing it like a natural.
- UK reality TV star and all-round funny man, Chris Taylor, is defeated when he can only do a single pull-up in his pre-almonding scenario. But, after consuming almonds, he’s shown completing a series of perfectly executed one-armed pull-ups.
“With a fun and humorous campaign like “Do You Almond?,” it was important to us to be able to harness the creativity and content creation skills that these influencers bring to the table. The output is truly unique and entertaining content that really inspires people to eat almonds and see them in a fun, new way,” said Roffe-Rackind.
To view some of the videos developed by UK content creators, visit the Almonds.com UK website.
