We wanted to increase traffic at Campbellskitchen.com during Thanksgiving - America’s biggest food-focused holiday.

In a first-of-its-kind Pinterest hack, we transformed a Pinboard into a giant version of Campbell’s most popular Thanksgiving recipe, Green Bean Casserole, and developed a way to let fans make it grow.

Each time someone pinned the casserole recipe, another pin was added to the Most Colossal Casserole and the cost of a real serving was donated to charity.

During the three weeks before Thanksgiving, our campaign increased CampbellsKitchen.com traffic by 250%, generated over a million new recipe views, and helped feed 10,000 hungry people.

The idea of a crowd-sourced Green Bean Casserole was inherently social. So clearly, social media had to be at the heart of the program.

To kick-start the effort, we placed badges on CampbellsKitchen.com that asked fans to help build the Most Colossal Casserole by pinning our casserole recipe. Each time the recipe was pinned, the casserole grew and the cost of a real portion was donated to a food charity.

On Pinterest, the recipe pin acted like a banner ad, inviting people to re-pin it to help The Most Colossal Casserole grow, and linking to our growing casserole board.

To spread The Most Colossal Casserole campaign even further, we developed an innovative banner ad that we embedded with the Pinterest API. People could pin the recipe directly from the banners that were placed on popular food and news related sites in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving.

In less than three weeks, Green Bean Casserole became the most-pinned Thanksgiving dish of all time with over 25,000 pins. We surpassed our donation limit ($10,000) to feed people in need, and had made the longest-scrolling food image in history.

With all the pinning, plus PR and earned media, the Most Colossal Casserole generated over 50 million impressions, increased traffic at CampbellsKitchen.com by 250% and drove over one million new recipe views.