How Alpha Foods beat inflation with "chickenflation"
When inflation was driving up the price of meat for consumers, a plant-based food brand saw the chance to develop a new RTB that most of their rivals ignored. Not health, not meaty textures - but price.
Context
Inflation was driving the prices of meat sky high. That was an opportunity for every plant-based brand, whose prices were more stable. But Alpha Foods didn't want to just ride the wave along with everyone else - as a small player in a quickly filling market, they wanted to drive brand awareness and associations with good value.
Objectives
- Drive mass awareness, with a PR stunt that will hit front pages and news feeds.
- Increase sales of all Alpha Foods products
Strategy
The brand faced challenges with brand awareness and low conversion rates. Recognising that only a small percentage of Americans followed vegan or vegetarian diets, Alpha Foods aimed to target balance-seeking meat eaters. So rather than try to capture the market who were already buying from BeyondMeat, Impossible Foods and others, they wanted to grow the category in their favour.
Campaign
Alpha Foods placed a digital tracker on the NASDAQ board in Times Square and published a full-page "economic" analysis in the Wall Street Journal to draw attention to their un-inflated prices, as well as an NYT mobile takeover and mobile ads driving to an e-commerce site.
Results
The campaign earned 500m impressions, and total brand sales increased 17%.
The work
