If Thanksgiving is about tradition, #TBThanksgiving (Throwback Thanksgiving) was about sharing those traditions online. Our content focused on sharing memories from our own time-honored tradition: the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line, which, for 35 years, has been offering sage advice to flustered cooks on Thanksgiving. We opened a vault full of Turkey Talk-Line memories, stories, and recipes. We showcased throwback photos that had never been shared, compiled top-rated recipes from experts from over the years, and offered up some of the wackiest calls the Talk-Line had ever received. All the while we encouraged everyone to share and celebrate their own favorite holiday memories. We hoped our audience would enjoy laughing along with us at the way things used to be, and all the ways in which nothing has changed in all that time.

Once we gave new meaning to #TBT, we approached media with a content-driven pitch that offered creative assets to help them tell nostalgic holiday stories themselves. For broadcast, we focused on the most memorable calls, knowing media would love the outrageous stories of real Thanksgiving cooks.

We focused outreach on reaching younger cooks and knew late night media was the way – so we pitched outlets we knew the late-night talk show writers would be reading, like FoodBeast (1M unique views with millennial audience) to get their attention. This led to Fallon producers writing one of the calls into his monologue.

We took this one step further to reach morning show viewers and extend late night coverage by taking the memorable call content and extending it to the real heroes who took the calls – the Talk-Line experts. Media like the Today Show, People.com and Stephen Colbert set up interviews.

Drove cultural relevance and awareness among cooks:

- Increased social reach on Facebook, driving 300% more organic engagements than the brand’s typical posts

- Went viral on Twitter, with a single post generating over 1,400 retweets

- Secured over 3 Billion total impressions (online engagement and earned media)

- On a media and out-of-pocket spend of just $250,000, our cost was less that 1/10th of a cent per impression

Drove purchase intent:

- Butterball’s sales increased 5.5% year-over-year, in a category that was flat overall

- Butterball.com traffic increased 13% over the previous year

- Butterball set a new record number for check-ins on Shopkick activations at Walmart with 126,199 (average is 70,000); leading to 34,000 purchases a full week before Thanksgiving.