Aiding in the visibility and growth of women entrepreneurs is the thread that ties Stacy’s Rise Project™ together. It is through their entrepreneurial spirits that women may continue to fill seats at a table historically filled by men.

Stacy's Pita Chips partnered with the 2023 Sundance Film Festival to showcase the Stacy's Rise Project, a grant and mentoring program for women entrepreneurs. As part of the partnership, we hosted Stacy's Roots to Rise Market to feature products from winners of the Stacy's Rise Project.

The documentary film Rise was developed in partnership with Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine, and its screening to the Sundance Film Festival audience was a pivotal moment in the Stacy’s journey of supporting women entrepreneurs.

In addition, we built a dedicated microsite to drive awareness, hosted daily screenings at the activation site, as well as panel discussions with guest celebrities, Stacy Madison and our featured founders.

To support the aims of the Stacy’s Rise Project at Sundance, we developed Stacy’s Roots to Rise Market, a multifunctional space to accommodate the range of activity for the activation:

- A market showcasing the products of 27 Stacy’s Rise protégé women founders

- Welcoming venue where all festival-goers could feel included and inspired

- Stage and seating for the Rise film screening, talks and panel discussions

- Event space for cocktail and private events

- Outdoor zone with sampling truck, seating and branding

- Setting for Getty Images portrait photography collaboration

We focussed on creating an immersive experience that highlighted women’s journeys while representing the spirit of the Stacy’s Rise Project. The microsite helped us achieve this and was leveraged for all aspects of the physical activation. This included on-demand screenings of the Rise film, profiles of all the founders, and an online marketplace of Stacy’s Rise Project winners.

The strategy for the microsite was clear from the outset; harness the excitement and sentiment generated by the physical activations to drive engagement with customers and increase the overall brand experience.

QR codes around the event linked back to the microsite, bringing the visitor to the landing page and offering three options:

- Watch the Rise film

- Learn more about the Stacy’s Rise Project

- Shop the ‘Roots to Rise’ Market

The physical ‘Roots to Rise Market’ showcased products created by Stacy’s Rise funded and mentored businesses. The products could be accessed via QR codes leading to the microsite page for that product.

To create buzz, social media needed to be leveraged:

- #HelpWomenRise was used across social channels.

- Using owned assets and earned media to connect the Stacy’s story to the film.

- Amplify the message by partnering with influencers followed by our target audience.

All the elements of the activation came together beautifully. Inside the Stacy’s Roots to Rise Market, we told our brand story while shining a spotlight on women founders and introduced the next class of Stacy’s Rise winners.

The microsite served as a hub for the Rise Project and Roots to Rise market updates. The site saw massive engagement, with just shy of 20,000 unique page views. Changes and updates were made in real-time to give visitors up-to-date and engaging information and to ensure feedback was acted upon quickly for optimal experience.

There were many points of delivery working in tandem and the microsite amplified the brand experience in all aspects of the activation, delivering on our primary and secondary KPIs:

- Drive overall awareness of the Rise Project, and the Rise short film.

- Drive overall awareness of the Roots to Rise Market and make it shoppable.

-More than 4,000 guests

-2.5B impressions on social

-19,819 unique microsite page views

-5,700 bags of Stacy’s Pita Chips sampled

-With programming open to both public and private events, Stacy’s accomplished its goal of mass awareness by driving intrigue from press and other brands.

-In addition to the paid media numbers below we also had 2.75B earned media impressions driving awareness for the entire Stacy’s Rise 2022-2023 program.

Partner Impressions

Amazon 19,934,685

IMDb 20,196,465

Meta 110,872,860

TripleLift 10,000,000

Spotify 13,247,654

Twitter 7,961,706

YouTube 199,161,520

Vox 24,325,613

Variety 10,043,746

Total 415,744,249