Isn’t a Challenge marketing campaign all about “challenging” our customers? But marketing wisdom says customer is king. Or, as I like to say, customer is your baby. Either ways, “challenging” our customers would turn them away, right?
Nope! It won’t. In fact, it will do the opposite.
It will invigorate them, energize them to take action, even if not sales related action. Done right, it can give a massive boost to your brand awareness.
Biggest proof? Veganuary! It is the Vegan ‘Challenge’ for January.
Even the UK PM Rishi Sunak wasn’t spared and was ‘challenged’ to try vegan for January 2023.
Challenge campaign vs marketing contests
What exactly do we mean by a Challenge Campaign and how is it different from a marketing contest? Here is my ET Brand Equity guest post deep diving into this topic:
Are contests outdated?
Now let’s understand why challenges are especially well suited for vegan brands and vegan businesses.
Challenges are perfect for spreading awareness about a cause and getting people to join in on the action. Remember Movember or the massive phenomenon that was the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge?
Veganism is a cause.
Before someone becomes a regular customer of our vegan product, they have to be convinced about the concept of veganism. Sampling will encourage one time trial but without the emotional buy-in, it will not transform into regular sales.
A challenge will get us that emotional buy-in because, as explained in the Brand Equity article, the focus of a challenge campaign is usually the cause or purpose, rarely the product. This is unlike in a contest, where the entire focus of the participants is on the prize being offered.
Also, because challenges are low-investment and easy-to-execute, they are easily doable by vegan brand of any size or stage of growth.
Haven’t we all been challenged at least once to a salad challenge or a push-up challenge or a 30daycooking challenge?
So what are you waiting for?
Design a challenge campaign:
- Think of the biggest barrier to adoption of your vegan product (e.g. I will not find anything tasty enough to eat if I become vegan) OR The biggest benefit from using it (e.g. you will lose weight through this).
- Next, can you think of some activity that will allow the participants to experience for themselves that the barrier was just an illusion OR That the product indeed delivers on the promised benefits?
- Finally, try to add some funny, unusual or dramatic asks/ requirements to the activity to make it entertaining while still being challenging to complete.
- Voila!! You have now designed a nice challenge campaign to explode customer engagement.
Question to think about : 💡
Is there a way to design your challenge campaign such that it becomes an IP (Intellectual Property) of your brand, used year after year, a la Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon?
Should you want to talk, I am just an email away. You know that, right?