How Does A Food Brand Successfully Utilizes Influencer Marketing?

YANG LIANG
Marketing in the Age of Digital
3 min readJun 27, 2022

Have you tried Ruffles? A new flavor, spicy dill pickle, was just launched and has partnered with a Boston Celtics player.

First, I would like to share my thoughts on collaborating with celebrities. Many clothing and shoe brands like Nike and Under Armour often use celebrities to promote their products. Their influence will drive the attention of the brand and development in the market. It will bring a lot of potential customers and gain some market share. Honestly, I haven’t seen many food brands use sports influencers to promote products. Typically, the company will select a social media influencer or gourmet expert. Therefore, I want to share a new campaign launched by Ruffles, which is called Ruffles teams with NBA star Jayson Tatum for sneaker collaboration.” It attracted my attention.

Ruffles Seize the Moment and Catch the NBA Season

The MarketingDive discovered that Ruffles is a food brand that collaborates with the sports area. It was an excellent opportunity to team with a celebrity from the NBA.

Here’s the summary of this new digital campaign: Ruffles has partnered with Celtics player Jayson Tatum on an exclusive sneaker and is one of the most famous and influential NBA players. Simultaneously, the brand also released a new flavor, spicy dill pickle, as part of the promotion. Consumers get the opportunity to win the sneaker by purchasing the new flavor or collaboration one. Moreover, buyers can enter the code into a particular website to participate.

Sourced from Marketing Dive

The Effectiveness of Collaboration

We know that it has been the NBA playoffs season last two months. No doubt that the games like these attracted basketball lovers’ attention. The fans support their favorite teams with enthusiasm. In addition, stars from different teams have their strengths and will be invited to participate in other activities during their basketball career, such as endorsements, charity, business activities, and so on.

Ruffles cleverly used NBA marketing efforts to promote its brand and release the sneaker collaboration. According to the MarketingDive, this new digital campaign not only takes advantage of Tatum’s current influence as the Boston Celtics square off for the NBA Championship, but also Ruffles can collect valuable first-party data about customers. The company can use current data to research customers’ insights and preferences. It’s valid for future products and marketing strategies.

Sharing personal opinions on Chip-Sneaker collaboration:

  1. Brand promotion
  2. Having specific target audiences (people who like Jayson Tatum, sneakers, NBA)
  3. Using an influencer to gain and increase brand awareness
  4. More engagement with consumers
  5. Build relationships with audiences
  6. Gain valuable first-party data

Quick Review What Is Marketing Influencer

Influencer marketing is also known as brand content. It’s another way to expand your content under the influencer’s effect. An influencer is someone who can influence others. There are many ways to display the products or core values the brand wants influencers to tell. For example, celebrities can post thoughts about using products on social media. Or they can show a picture of wearing or using the goods with a specific brand logo.

Overall, I think the collaboration between Ruffles and an NBA player attracts people’s attention. Choosing the launching time during the 2022 NBA playoffs adds value to the digital campaign. The purpose of this collaboration is not only to promote its new flavor chip but also to collect the primary data from participation on the website. Influencer marketing helps brands share the message and gain attention.

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