Case Study

The sweetest comeback in the history of ever.

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BR mounted one of the greatest comebacks in history for a legendary snack brand with no budget by enlisting, empowering and celebrating the brand's broken-hearted, loyal fans to spread the good word.

At Bernstein-Rein, we believe retail intelligence comes from consumer insights, a true brand purpose, and half a century of unrivaled experience. We put these beliefs together to accelerate growth. This approach is called Retailigent™ – it's what drives our work every day.

Here’s How We Made them Retailigent
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Opportunity

The new owner and hopeful resurrector of Hostess needed a marketing miracle to relaunch the 90-year-old brand and reignite a love affair with consumers with next to no budget. While Twinkies had a history of love in the snack aisle, it was going to take an even bigger shopping audience to drive the sales the legacy brand was needing.

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Insight

Research determined our target of Gen X Moms wanted to be able to talk the talk with their kids. But our social media listening audits revealed a formerly untapped admiration for Hostess among male millennials. Jackpot. We had our troubadours, now we just had to inspire them with the right song.

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Idea

BR was able to dig deep into customer's hearts, minds and social feeds to craft a battle cry that would drive the greatest comeback of all time. Starting with an integrated multi-channel campaign that connected with the fickle millennial target, BR found they preferred to self-discover brands and then self-promote these brands with their own sense of creativity. We reached our audience through social media, radio, street teams, special events, PR and more. Our die-hard fans were able to own and carry the Hostess message forward.

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We pre-launched the campaign with announcements of the upcoming return of the beloved snack cakes with out-of-home postings in New York and LA. We used guerilla and social to ask customers to "Prepare Your Cakeface."

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BR rounded out the campaign by officially announcing Hostess' return as "The sweetest comeback in the history of ever." In the end, we were able to leverage consumers' broken hearts in a tongue-in-cheek way, reuniting them with the brand they loved.

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Results

Twinkies came back, indeed.

+ We drove a staggering increase in Twinkie sales of 185% and saw product sell-out within the first 24 hours.

+ #Twinkies trended in the US with 464.9 million Twitter impressions and over 12,000 BuzzFeed article views.

+ BR made a huge impact in social channels with a 25% increase in Facebook fans and 2000% increase in Instagram followers.

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