CLIF BAR
By attracting people with fun creative and including ads in placements like Instagram feed and Instagram Stories, Clif Bar & Company lifted ad recall by 28 points.
Clif Bar & Company is a family- and employee-owned business that crafts food with purpose—for people and the planet. Famous for its energy bars, the company prioritizes organic, plant-based ingredients and sustainable sourcing standards. Clif Bar’s LEED-certified bakeries run on 100% renewable electricity.
lift in ad recall
lift in brand/product awareness
lift in purchase intent
Clif Bar wanted new customers to first be aware of new Clif Nut Butter Filled and Fruit Smoothie Filled (Clif Filled) products and then, ultimately, to purchase and eat them.
Clif Bar partnered with digital agency AKQA to run an awareness campaign, showing the ads in Instagram feed and Instagram Stories. By including the ads in the full-screen Stories placement, Clif Bar captured people's attention for longer durations, which effectively created awareness and consideration for Clif Filled Bars.
The team created short, 15-second video ads with branding in the first few seconds and a message high in taste appeal. The ad creative showed pristinely raked “sand” and precisely manicured pathways made of ingredients like organic nut butter, oats and chocolate, made to resemble a Zen garden. Using a meditative voiceover and a serene soundtrack, Clif Bar intended the video to be a tongue-in-cheek version of a meditation video. In these “lessons in self-control,” the voiceover provides guidance on how to avoid temptation, but ultimately, the ingredients are just too tempting. Even the guide succumbs and admits that you “Can’t Fight the Filling.”
The team showed the ads to people whose interests aligned with the characteristics of its core customers: health conscious, active and adventure-seeking. To increase its younger customer base, Clif Bar also showed the ads to younger individuals whose interests aligned with its core audience. Clif Bar determined the results of its video ad campaign for Clif Filled Bars, which ran from April 17–May 17, 2019, using a Facebook brand lift study, which showed a:
28-point lift in ad recall
12-point lift in brand/product awareness
6.8-point lift in purchase intent
