As with many other brands as we enter into 2023, Spindrift is investing its marketing dollars in TikTok over Instagram and Twitter despite having focused on organic growth on these platforms in the past year. The decision is spurred by the amount of time Gen Z spend on the app.
“TikTok allows us to express a different dimension of our brand voice, become a part of culture while driving brand awareness and rewards creativity by delivering content to an uncapped audience, making it a key community growth driver for us in a way that other social platforms do not,” Melissa Shum, senior director of consumer marketing at Spindrift, said of the brand’s choice of TikTok as its primary social platform.
TikTok allows Spindrift to showcase its brand personality via behind-the-scenes content, cooking classes, virtual events, in-person events, merchandise and, of course, the product itself. Shum said that 95% of the brand’s ad spend went to social media and 5% went to paid search for its overall ad spend. With that said, it is unclear how much of Spindrift’s advertising budget is allocated to TikTok in particular, as Shum declined to share overall budget specifics. According to Pathmatics data, the brand spent a little over $747,000 so far on advertising efforts in 2022.
The brand hopes that more organic content will help promote more community-based marketing through that channel. Furthermore, word-of-mouth is a powerful tool for Spindrift — a survey of the brand’s community revealed that the majority of its customers learned about the brand from friends who had already tried its products, Shum said. “We believe we can continue to spread brand awareness by building a community of engaged brand advocates who love the brand so much they will tell everyone about Spindrift on our behalf,” Shum added, commenting on how the approach has been working so far.
“Word-of-mouth is core to our marketing strategy and our social campaigns are our strongest vehicle that we believe helps inspire advocacy via a warm referral of Spindrift to a friend,” said Shum.
Related to Spindrift’s word-of-mouth efforts, the brand also has a sales team dedicated to making sure its retail displays are appealing for shoppers who encounter them in U.S. grocery stores.
Moving forward, Spindrift will also be focused on developing extended relationships with influencers. “These are all influencers we’ve developed an authentic relationship with over time and consist of micro-tier all the way to celebrity,” said Shum. “They are all super fans of the brand and considered the biggest advocates from our community, who are always the first to try and receive the new flavour ahead of the launch announcement.”
