Taking the sweet out of sweets…
The Brand
As humans, we are naturally hardwired to want the sweet stuff, so we can get the extra calories needed to survive the harsh elements. But for most of us, our elements aren’t really that harsh anymore, which poses a problem – we want sugar, but we don’t really need it like we used to. So, cutting a sugar habit to implement a healthier lifestyle can be hard – it literally goes against what our bodies want! The founders of Sweet Defeat created a clinically-backed product to help break this sugar cycle.
Sweet Defeat has a patented formula that uses the Gymnema Sylvestre plant to actually make sweets tasteless or bitter, thus curbing cravings and allowing you to lose weight naturally. Sweet Defeat products come as gum, lozenges, and fast-acting spray.
The Approach
We asked 18 influencers to try Sweet Defeat and share personalized stories around their experience. The goal was then to educate their followers about how it works, highlight the all-natural ingredients, and drive traffic to the Sweet Defeat website.
Our Strategy
The campaign started with a focus on impressions, but we found that we weren’t getting the results we wanted. So, we shifted to a click-focused campaign to help drive more website traffic (yeah, you can do that). We pivoted mid-campaign to adapt our deliverables into forms of content that would better spotlight and explain Sweet Defeat and its uses. We did this by hiring new influencers with video expertise, and re-working our whitelisting to generate more clicks.
Post Types
Carousels
In-Feed Posts
Videos
Stories
TikTok
Videos
YouTube
Videos
Blog
Posts
Podcasts
Audio
The Big, Beautiful Highlights
If we see certain parts of our campaigns that aren’t grabbing the results we want, we aren’t afraid to pivot. We shifted our end-goal from impressions to clicks by switching to platforms that could be whitelisted. Then, we hired new influencers who specialized in video content to better explain what Sweet Defeat does. ✅
As a result, we ran across 6 different platforms with an overall engagement rate of 3.81%!
In addition to the run-of-the-mill comments you get (ie: OMG so cute!) a lot of the comments on Instagram showed brand affinity and intent to purchase (I legit just ordered that sweet blocker, and I’m not the only one on our team who did 😉)!
Our Instagram Story content KILLED on engagements – across our 9 influencers who did Stories, we had over 230,000 views across Story frames, 810 link clicks, 1,666 sticker taps to Sweet Defeat’s Instagram page, and an overall engagement rate of 4.37%!
Our influencers hit it out of the park with their fun taste tests 🍭 and humorous content – (check out the examples embedded below)! There was the video by Ashley, which focused on curbing those sweet sugar cravings – and we loved how Charlie incorporated his son into the Sweet Defeat challenge. Lastly, we loved how Gia brought her personality, pep, and energy to her posts – her content garnered 8,400 likes and an overall engagement rate of 5.29%.
Influencer Highlights
The Sweet Defeat Challenge
It’s not easy to show audiences what a product like this does – after all, you’re literally telling them it makes things taste gross! So to really drive the point home, we had influencers do the “Sweet Defeat Challenge” where they tried the product, and then tried a sweet. The reactions on influencers’ faces alone convinced audiences that this product works. These creators, like @laurenelyce and @hayleyelysefit (below), did a killer job at keeping audiences watching. They were really able to show how they’ll be able to keep the cookie jar closed with the help of Sweet Defeat in a fun, trendy way (via the challenge).
Bold ideas. Cultural relevance. Data-first strategies.
At The Shelf, we create the blueprint that drives results for brands and inspires the industry. Ready to see what we can do for your brand?
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