Campbell’s Broths come in a variety of exciting flavours, including Pho, Pork Ramen, and Thai Chicken – the kind of flavours young, experimental home cooks should be excited to cook with.

Through research, though, we found that millennial shoppers, including those who like to cook and experiment with ingredients, rarely, if ever, think about Campbell’s broth. In an already low engagement category, millennial shoppers were especially un-engaged with Campbell’s broths.

Our brief was simple: deliver an idea that would engage younger shoppers and help them see the brand in a new light by highlighting the unique possibilities of Campbell’s modern and interesting broth flavours.

Essentially, make Campbell’s broth relevant to an audience that barely knows it exists.

Go to Pinterest and search for a recipe and you’ll return hundreds of results, from chefs to blogs to brands – and they all look identical. Every chicken stir fry looks like every other chicken stir fry. So, how do you stand out in this sea of sameness? You can’t. Not with more food recipes, at least.

Instead of food, Campbell’s needed something completely unique and unexpected...

Introducing: Campbell’s Brothtails: partnering with mixologists, we turned 4 of Campbell’s unique broth flavours – Pho, Thai Chicken, Pork Ramen, and Mushroom – into 4 unique broth-based cocktails you can only make with Campbell’s broths.

Millennials aversion to traditional media channels is well reported. No need to repeat them here. Suffice to say, a traditional media strategy wouldn’t work.

Instead, we trusted the strength of the idea and targeted PR & social outreach to not just engage our desired audience, but to also engage the people and places they turn to discover what’s cool – media outlets, blogs, and tastemakers on social.

To do this, we used editorial-style photography that matched modern cocktail photography and designed and delivered a customized Brothtails tasting kit to our chosen media, blog, and social tastemakers with everything they needed to make one of the Brothtails.

At the core of this success, though, was active real-time social engagement across a number of platforms as the idea spread, and more and more people flooded Campbell’s social channels to see if it was real.

Millennials aversion to traditional media channels is well reported. No need to repeat them here. Suffice to say, we knew a traditional media strategy wouldn’t work.

We first launched the recipes organically on Campbell’s Instagram page. Then, we trusted the strength and uniqueness of the idea to engage the people, places, and platforms our audience trusts to discover what’s cool.

We staggered the release of articles and social posts for maximum impact, helping to ensure the Brothtails conversation rarely waned. As the wave of conversation from an article in the Toronto Star died down, an article on TrendHunter appeared… as that died down, a detailed tasting review appeared on Buzzfeed… and so on, for more than 4 weeks of near constant conversation.

Finally, we engaged in real-time social conversation across a number of social channels as the idea spread and engagement grew.

Brothtails received dozens of positive write ups from a variety of outlets including Buzzfeed, the Toronto Star, TrendHunter, NPRs “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me”, and Virgin Radio.

On social specifically, Campbell’s saw wave after wave of organic commenting and sharing on their own accounts and posts for more than 4 weeks, as well as seeing Brothtails be shared and meme’d by social accounts with massive followings, including @theshaderoom, and @moverandshakerco. Brothtials were commented on and shared by other brands, including Mike’s Hard Lemonade and Knorr (a direct competitor).

As a result of the social reaction to Brothtails, multiple bars across Canada organically decided to serve Campbell’s Brothtails, and experiment with their own brothtail flavours and varieties.

In total, Brothtails received more than 46 million impressions, saw a 1,600% increase in organic social engagement for Campbell’s, and a 69% increase in brand mentions.

While relevance within Canada was the goal, it’s worth noting that Brothtails received positive engagement from America, Australia, Germany, England, and more, with many bemoaning the fact that Campbell’s broths are only in Canada and asking their Canadian followers to send them some so they could make Brothtails, too.