How Pillsbury’s #ChristmasBakedEasy campaign by Django Digital X Schbang garnered a reach of over 307K eyeballs

Brief about the campaign

Django Digital, joined hands with Schbang, to roll out an influencer marketing campaign for Pillsbury on the occasion of Christmas, incorporating one of their most popular and highest selling products – their cake mixes. The agencies had to highlight the ease of baking with Pillsbury cake mixes in the highest cake consumption season. Hence, the overarching thought behind the campaign eventually became their hashtag – #ChristmasBakedEasy. The ultimate motive was to drive the preference of the product over other brands available in the market.

Objective

The objective of the campaign was to create a desire and demand for the Pillsbury cake mixes in the highest cake consumption season. Another objective was to highlight the convenience of baking, using the brand’s cake mixes at home.

Influencer Selection Strategy

The aim was to associate with the right mix of creators from different genres. However, motherhood was the one binding force as all of them executed the activity with their kids. The synergy(Django Digital X Schbang) had a very popular household name from television – actress Juhi Parmar alongside a celebrity chef, Amrita Raichand and two popular young mom bloggers, Ritcha Verma and Shruti Anand. The last name to join the campaign was a renowned lifestyle influencer named Roshni Bhatia

Campaign strategy

This being Django Digital’s third Christmas campaign with Pillsbury, they understood the brand sentiment to be portrayed in the activity. The primary goal was to make the content look organic and relatable instead of it having “branded content” flavour written all over it and in the face of the audience. Thus, the synergy invested a lot of time in planning the content brief. There were three different concept notes, which were executed by five creators to exclude the flavour of monotony from the campaign’s content. The three concepts were “Bake It Yourself”, “No Oven No Pressure” and they tried something new this time with a “3D reel post”. The idea was to celebrate the occasion of Christmas with a freshly baked or steamed cake that’s made at home with a touch of love and emotions rather than buying a readymade cake from the bakery for their kids and family. The prime target audience for the campaign was young urban mothers who are both, working professionals and homemakers, seeking convenient options to bake for their family, with their personalized touch to make Christmas memorable and special for their family. Thus, the agencies made sure that they had only mom influencers from different genres so that the brand’s target audience is aligned with the majority of followers of the influencers.

Impact

Django Digital and Schbang wanted to show baking with Pillsbury cake mixes as a family affair; an occasion that allows you to spend precious family time baking something fresh, delicious and can be whipped in your kitchen easily. Despite the time crunch, they managed to deliver extremely well-executed influencer content in the form of Instagram reels, as it’s one of the most consumed formats of the content of late. The reels with Pillsbury cake mixes portrayed the objective of the campaign in a 60- sec crisp screen time. The content complemented the Christmas and festive vibe, with extremely fun, engaging and relatable videos for the audience to enjoy. Moreover, all the creators who put in the effort had a great time enjoying the yummy Pillsbury cake post their shoot. The campaign was executed within a tight timeline of 30 days, garnering a reach of over 307K eyeballs.

Challenges

The agencies inform that time crunch was an obvious challenge that they faced. The battle consisted of finding the perfect mix of creators, ensuring their availability and curating the apt content as desired and deemed fit to meet the brand’s objective.

Shalini Sur, Influencer Manager at Django Digital states, “This is the third consecutive year that we have executed the Pillsbury Christmas campaign. It is a great way to approach campaigns by brands. It gives a wider scope for optimization with every passing year and results in smoother execution because the processes are already in place. I would love for all brands to adopt this. We’ve witnessed a considerable difference in output when a person/agency understands the brand and then gets involved in the marketing.