Reimagining a legacy brand with Social Media
Client: Hostess
Reimagining a legacy brand with Social Media
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Creative strategy for social media and creative direction that led to Instagram organic growth, 200K new followers.
Accumulated 5M engagements and 218M media impressions, earning recognition from Mashable, Forbes, and winning PR News Social Media Award for organic growth strategy.
Increased net income by 500% in 5 years (from $57M in 2016 to $288M in 2021).
Increased market share from 15% to 21% for sweet baked goods breakfast category.
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Hostess was re-entering the market and recovering after famously declaring bankruptcy when we won the role of Social Media AOR without a pitch. Our job was to use social media to contemporize the brand and build relevancy with Millennials. I led the creation of a unique creative strategy and social strategy that brought the brand to life with a sassy personality and playful (sometimes crazy) creative. Along with being one of my personal favorite fun Creative Direction and Copywriting projects, the work gained notable attention and results.
As owner of a boutique agency, I was responsible for many things, including generating new business. When I learned that Hostess had named a new CMO, I sent a congratulatory note with this image we created for him. Within a couple days he contacted me, saying that of all the agency emails he’d received, this note was his favorite. We flew out to their headquarters within the month, and won the business without a pitch. He kept a large framed version of this on his office wall. (It’s my best new biz story, of all time. :)
Hostess was still recovering from their famous bankruptcy and had only recently made their “Sweetest Comeback in the History of Ever.” We had a shoestring budget, and were tasked with using social media to contemporize the brand and build relevancy with Millennials. The CMO was a bold and savvy marketer, wanted to move fast and take some risks, and we were definitely the right fit for this. The immersion process was fast but thorough, with existing research, workshops and stakeholder interviews.
Market segment research and sales data showed that Millennials were driving the expansion of convenience foods. We identified where we could get the most opportunity on social media with limited resources – Millennial Moms. Next, we examined our key competitor, Little Debbie, to determine where we could stand out. Little Debbie’s brand personality leaned more wholesome and “regular mom” voice. We decided to go left where she was going right. There was clearly room for another type of personality in snack cake social.
The brand voice practically wrote itself – it was easy to turn Hostess into a sassy Millennial woman who likes to sip wine in the bathtub and eat cupcakes whenever she wants.
After creating a content creation and management strategy, we had a small, tight team working on the brand from there on out. I guided the team to align with other categories that our target viewed as small indulgences. Makeup, beverages, and body care products were our adjacencies.
Dedicated social media managers shared top hashtags and trends in our daily morning scrum, and we crafted content first thing each day. In keeping with a boutique agency atmosphere, I had a very close working relationship with the client, and he allowed us to move VERY fast and gave room for creative decisions. It was probably the most perfect client relationship for this type of account that a Creative Director could ever hope for.
My team and I created new content every week, and aligned additional content campaigns with new product roll-outs and limited time, seasonal offerings.
Fake products quickly became fan favorites. Five of the top six posts from 2016-2019 were fake products, including shampoo and peanut butter pickle Twinkies.
As the social media accounts grew in popularity, fans expressed their hope for some of these products to become real. Over the next years to come, we worked with Hostess to help bring several items to life, including coffee creamer and scented candles.
One of the highlights was the collaboration with Alice and Olivia fashion house for the creation of Swarovski-crystal-embellished cupcake and twinkie box purses. The clutches debuted on the runway at New York Fashion Week; currently, they are pricey collectibles and show up on Poshmark every now and then.
A partnership with music artist Marshmello featured Twinkies in a music video, adding more momentum to the work we were doing to engage the Millennial audience.
The Hostess social work my team and I created was noticed by the press (a few favorites headlines are shown here). The work earned awards for creative and organic social strategy.
One of the most notable moments was when we created a post claiming to be the “official snack cake of the eclipse”. This post instigated a “twitter war” with Moon-Pie, racking up 1.32 billion media impressions.
Instagram organic growth was notable, with little to no paid media to support these channels. The brand voice, community engagement, and never-ending stream of fan-loved content that we created was the driving force for the brand’s social media comeback.
Hostess Account Highlights:
Creative strategy for social media and creative direction that led to Instagram organic growth, 200K new followers.
Accumulated 5M engagements and 218M media impressions, earning recognition from Mashable, Forbes, and winning PR News Social Media Award for organic growth strategy.
Increased net income by 500% in 5 years (from $57M in 2016 to $288M in 2021).
Increased market share from 15% to 21% for sweet baked goods breakfast category.
Contributed 10.6% of net revenue increase through launch of new Hostess Bakery Petites product line.
Helped design and execute marketing plans for acquisitions of Voortman Cookies and Cloverhill Bakery.
Increased e-store traffic by 2K% and surpassed Instagram social media commerce ad benchmarks by 355%. Achieved 175K visitors in the first 8 months, more than double that of the leading competitor.
Deep-Fried Twinkies launch - Achieved #1 trending hashtag on Facebook for 6 Hours, Twitter for 14 Hours
Deep-Fried Twinkies launch - Developed promotional videos, garnering 1.6M views with 37.4% view completion rate (vs. industry average of 15%).
About my role:
As Social Media AOR for Hostess, my agency was responsible for strategy, creative, social media management, and extensive content production. Because of the agency’s boutique creative firm ecosystem, I served the account in my key areas of strength, leading the development of Creative Strategy within the social media environment, followed by a heavy lift in Creative Direction.
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