Situation

Is there anything worse than car shopping? Turns out, people would rather do ANYTHING than head to a dealer to barter for a car. They’d rather get a root canal, go to jury duty, or sit through a vegan dinner party where the star of the meal is a gag-reflex-inducing beetloaf. We knew that the vegan dinner party scene would trigger some backlash from the vegan community.

Brief

Create content and responses that will engage the social audience and diffuse negative reactions.

Objectives

Increase engagement and influence positive sentiment.

If you can’t beet them, humor them. In anticipation of social outrage over the vegan dinner party scene, we decided to create an actual (and edible) beetloaf recipe to show it was all in good fun, and that we in fact respected their lifestyle and diet. We created a unique recipe, baked it, and fed it to our ECD, CEO and clients who all agreed it wasn’t so bad afterall, then crafted a recipe card to share with our audience. Our recipe, “It’s actually good Beetloaf” featured our vegan hostess and her infamous main dish, along with a message that beetloaf had gotten a bad rap, so we made it better with this tasty recipe. The recipe also included information on how we made car shopping better with Hyundai’s Shopper Assurance program, and invited them to learn more online.

Data

Through social listening, we came to an insight that vegans are one of the most vocal communities and often engage in advocacy-related conversations.

Target audience (consumer demographic/individuals/organizations)

Viewers responding on social media channels, press, PETA

Approach

Respond to social audience posts with the recipe and a message indicating that vegan food wasn’t so bad after all.

Call to action

Give this recipe a try, and learn more about how we made car shopping better with Shopper Assurance.

Implementation

A digital recipe card was created which was posted to individuals in response to their comments about the vegan dinner party scene.

Timeline

The recipe card was created a week prior to the spot’s release, but we didn’t deploy it until the spot aired during the Super Bowl to get the maximum impact.

Placement

Twitter and Facebook

Scale

57.8 million impressions

Business impact – sales, donations, site traffic

News and industry outlets quickly picked up the story, and our mentions increased 9,000%.

Response rate

We replied to over 100 posts with our beetloaf recipe, which was also shared and posted separately by other users.

Change in behaviour

People who were initially angry when they tweeted, replied to the recipe positively, shifting sentiment.