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Be Relevant: Arizona Taco Festival
by Brad Bennett, channel marketing manager, deli, Tyson Foods Inc.
It can be a challenge to create a meaningful and memorable interaction with consumers, especially Millennials, who we know connect more with experiences than products (1). So how can brands successfully engage with this audience? You meet up for a taco.
Some quick bites about the Arizona Taco Festival:
• 35,000-plus attendees
• 100 varieties of tacos from 50-plus vendors
• 4.1 million event sponsor brand impressions
Engaging with attendees
The 2018 Arizona Taco Festival was a recipe for success with the perfect party atmosphere and flavorful, authentic tacos (2). It was also an awesome occasion for a hands-on, personal experiential marketing experience, so I gave it a go with our partners from Bashas’, Arizona’s hometown grocer, and we were not disappointed.
We went to work elevating Bashas’ festival participation pre-event to boost the brand’s presence. As the exclusive grocery sponsor, they were included on social media, press releases, ads, and the event website. We also created a custom taco recipe with video by Chef Joanie Simon and offered discounted festival tickets with qualifying Bashas’ deli purchases.
A new brand experience
While tacos are pretty tasty, the bigger question is how do you connect a festival to brand loyalty? We created an experience that allowed brand ambassadors to engage one-on-one with visitors, generating a personal connection and face to the brand. We also went the route of NOT sampling food and, instead, gave out cool branded giveaways.
Brand ambassadors actively pursued attendees to snap photos with friends and fun props in the Bashas’ branded booth and engage in sweepstakes for a variety of prizes. This particular experience also showed Bashas’ continued support for local community events and primed a mostly-millennial audience to further engage through their preferred communication and entertainment platform—social media. These interactive activities sparked 695 total estimated shares on Twitter and Instagram, which reached approximately 62,745 total viewers and generated more than 200K impressions across the web (3).
The consistent flow of traffic and response we received proved that a brand experience is not just about the product. It is about offering engagement opportunities to attendees and providing incentives that drive them into stores later by inspiring them with meal trends, made easy with rotisserie chicken from the deli.
Learn more about the unique ways the Tyson Deli team has been Bringing Deli to the People at TysonVelocity.com/FoodQuest and let us know if you want to join the conversation in how we’re approaching deli differently.
Sources:
1. Tyson Foods, Emotional Trigger Study, 2017; Tyson Foods, Awareness, Trial, Repurchase, 2016; Tyson Foods, Prepared Foods Challenge, 2016
2. Arizona Taco Festival, October 13-14 2018, Scottsdale, AZ
3. Estimates are calculated based on social media platform benchmarks in regard to average video view & engagement.
