© 2010 Recipe Marketing

© 2012 Recipe Marketing

San Luis Obispo Food Bank

Case Study

© 2012 Recipe Marketing

San Luis Obispo Food BankMarketing Challenge

• SLO Food Bank was chosen amongst thousands of charities to participate in Toyota’s 100 Cars for Good promotion, where they would compete on Facebook for votes against four other charities to win a free car. The challenge was, SLO Food Bank had no social media in place except a personal Facebook profile. They had three months to compete and had no budget for this effort.

© 2012 Recipe Marketing

San Luis Obispo Food BankMarketing Strategy

• The strategy was to establish the SLO Food Bank’s social presence as quickly as possible, support the effort online and offline to build awareness of their participation in the competition and identify key influencers to help generate votes. Email, public relations and advertising were used to help build awareness and drive votes for the Food Bank.

© 2012 Recipe Marketing

San Luis Obispo Food BankCreative Mix

• SLO Food Bank’s Facebook profile was transferred to a page. A welcome page was designed to increase likes by 47%. A consistent schedule of posts were developed to generate excitement about the competition as well as encourage sharing.

© 2012 Recipe Marketing

San Luis Obispo Food BankCreative Mix

• As part of Toyota’s contest, SLO Food Bank needed to submit a video explaining why they needed to win a car. Recipe Marketing donated their services, created the video and annotated it with the Toyota 100 Cars For Good URL to increase votes.

© 2012 Recipe Marketing

San Luis Obispo Food BankCreative Mix

• Recipe Marketing created a branded SLO Food Bank Twitter page to build awareness. To spread the word quickly about the contest, other Food Banks nationwide were encouraged to follow the SLO Food Bank and retweet their message to support them in their quest to win a car. Celebrities (chefs, local politicians, etc) who supported the Food Bank were also followed.

© 2012 Recipe Marketing

San Luis Obispo Food BankCreative Mix

• Toyota provided the SLO Food Bank with $200 of free Facebook ads. These ads were implemented the last week of the contest to maximize reach and frequency and were targeted to SLO County residents. The local paper donated and ran free ads about the contest.

© 2012 Recipe Marketing

San Luis Obispo Food BankResults

• In three months, the SLO Food Bank’s fans grew 70% and twitter followers grew 450%. While the SLO Food Bank did not win the car, they finished third, capturing 22% of the vote. They also now have a solid social media presence, greater community engagement and a larger reach to generate future donations.