SmartyPants, Instacart Ring in the New Year

Unilever’s SmartyPants teamed with Instacart to elevate the brand's vitamins and mineral supplements on the platform and help drive awareness and sales during the category's crucial New Year season. 

As part of the brand’s "New Year, New You" (NYNY) campaign, SmartyPants worked to own the first week of January on Instacart with prime advertising real estate on the grocery delivery and pick-up service's platform: a dedicated banner ad that sat at the top of the first storefront page of any retailer where SmartyPants is sold, including Walmart (in limited markets), Meijer, Costco, Target, Kroger’s flagship and Ralphs, CVS, Walgreens and Sam's Club. Each ad linked to a landing page listing available SmartyPants gummy vitamins and supplements for men, kids, women and expecting mothers (prenatal) at the respective retailer, and dangling a $1 digital coupon Instacart shoppers could apply to their carts throughout the month to further incentivize trial.   

"With this activation, we're really excited because we're owning the most top-of-funnel prime real estate for the entire first week of the year," Amy Avellar, director of shopper marketing at SmartyPants, told the Path to Purchase Institute. "SmartyPants is the only brand for this first week that you will see in this space. [It's] a really large opportunity for us to drive brand awareness and reach those new buyers and extend our awareness as much as possible." 

The banner ad creative was unique to each day with the brand testing the impact of different messaging and products, Avellar said. Marketing support also included a dedicated email to Instacart shoppers; targeted display ads, including Instacart’s new search keyword banner ads; and featured product ads on the platform throughout January. 

SmartyPants also was tapped by Instacart to be the solo brand partner for the retailer’s own "New Year, New You" campaign. As the brand partner, SmartyPants products and branding was showcased within the retailer's campaign, which runs throughout January and focuses on engaging consumers as they hit a collective “reset” button. 

The New Year season (followed closely by back-to-school) is extremely important for the brand to capture those new buyers and those shoppers with renewed interest in the category to maximize that year-round consumer value, Avellar said.

"New Year, New You timing is where we go the strongest in terms of activations and budget to support," Avellar said. "We know if we're able to convert them in January, we as a brand see really high repeat and retention." 

Beyond Instacart, SmartyPants’ NYNY effort this year also runs through February and includes:  

• Retailer media networks, such as Walmart Connect and Target’s Roundel; 
• Third-party mobile media company Ogury, to execute targeted mobile ads driving consumers to specific retail partners or product pages for purchase;  
• Social media activity on its own accounts; 
• Influencers and paid amplification with influencer company Acorn;  
• Demos at Costco and Sam’s Club;  
• Meijer’s January beauty wellness box;  
• FSIs;
• In-store shelf talkers and on-pack neckhangers through Neptune Retail Solutions;  
• Digital incentives via Ibotta and Prodege;  
• Sampling through Target when activity returns.  

Across all the digital and physical touchpoints, message consistency remains key for the brand.  “We’re creating this integrated marketing campaign that spans both digital and physical, because we know that the path to purchase no longer is straight, and we want to make sure that we have our brand presence and communication to the shopper at every step of the way,” Avellar said.

Relationship with Instacart

During the past two years, SmartyPants has increasingly worked with Instacart to drive the brand's performance on the platform. "We as a brand early on saw the opportunity and value in Instacart," said Avellar, adding the brand invested strongly in featured product ads within Instacart in 2021. "We have a very close relationship with the Instacart team. We meet with them weekly, actually, and have really invested in our presence on the platform, and growing our share, and being a leader within the vitamin space."

Shelter-in-place mandates and closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the growth of e-commerce in 2020. As COVID-19 vaccines rolled out in 2021, however, a new hybrid shopper emerged. "Shoppers are heading back to brick and mortar," Avellar said. "We see retail [in-store] sales ... going up, but also we're continuing to see just this crazy advancement in e-commerce. Now the shopper has gotten used to shopping on platforms like Instacart or using buy online, pick up in-store."

The brand will have an "always-on" approach to targeted display and featured product ads on the platform through the rest of the year.