Talenti Highlights Flavor at Target

Unilever's Talenti brand expanded beyond scoopable jars with a program at a mass merchant earlier this year.

The campaign, titled "Talenti Mini Bars, Big Flavor at Target," ran from May 1 to June 15. It supported the launch of the brand's first novelty items, Talenti mini sorbetto and gelato bars. The target market for this campaign focused on shoppers who purchased Talenti, ice cream, or popsicle/novelty products at Target in the last 12 months.

"We needed a campaign that would showcase the premium and beloved flavors Talenti is known for while leveraging the newness factor of the bars in order to create buzz around the new products and drive trial," says Jenny Roesner, shopper marketing manager at Unilever. "Additionally, we wanted to educate shoppers on the benefits of the new novelty products, including the spoon-free convenience and lower calories of the bars to promote their guilt-free and 'enjoyable anywhere at anytime' nature."

The primary insight driving the brand's strategy was creating more usage occasions for Talenti while simultaneously filling a white space for on-the-go indulgence. Consumers also are concerned about their overall wellness and are seeking healthier snack options for a better lifestyle, Roesner says.

Talenti partnered with Breaktime Media to bring the campaign to fruition due to the solution provider's experience in creating unique programs for product launches and its ability to develop personalized pre-shop content.

Inside the Breaktime Media experience, shoppers could take a quick personality quiz to discover the ideal flavor of Talenti mini gelato and sorbetto bars. From there, they could learn more about the treats before having the options to click to add products of their choice directly to their Target digital shopping cart. After adding products to cart, shoppers could then participate in a peer voting pool to share which flavor of the Talenti mini bars they most wanted to try.

"Breaktime used its targeting capabilities to distribute the content experience to its core audience of Target shoppers, driving engagement, creating buzz and ultimately inspiring purchases," Roesner says.

To further build awareness and encourage sales, Talenti worked with Roundel, Target's media network, to support the launch by running media that drove traffic to the product pages on Target.com. The program included a brand page, onsite display ads, offsite display ads, and social media posts on Instagram and Pinterest. There were three different versions of the ads — equity, promotion and same-day services, Roesner says. At least one of the ads touted $1 savings on a purchase of the mini bars using the Target Circle loyalty program.

Although there were no dedicated in-store displays or signage used in the campaign, the packaging for the mini bars included a red bunting flag that said "New!" to draw attention to the products.

Talenti attributed much of the success of the campaign to Breaktime Media's digital interactive content. It resulted in tens of thousands of unique shopper engagements with an average engagement time of 2 minutes and 22 seconds. The Breaktime campaign also proved successful in driving trial, outperforming add-to-cart benchmarks by 62% and resulting in an 8.2% incremental sales lift based on a third-party sales measurement study, Roesner says.

Compared to another Talenti ice cream Roundel program of similar spend and duration, the mini bars campaign resulted in a stronger return on ad spend, she says.