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Told Ya!, D2C Momvertising Opps: Blue Apron invests significant ad dollars in new campaign after media review (Score 73)

On December 14, grocery delivery service Blue Apron (BA) debuted a "Wellness 360" campaign, one of its largest-ever multi-channel campaigns in terms of investment. This campaign is part of an effort to promote how home cooking can positively impact bodies and souls. It rolled out across digital video (OTT/CTV), influencers, display, paid social, search, affiliate and media integrations, along with owned channel support through organic social, blog, email and website, according to brand and marketing head Dani Simpson. These ads will run through March 31, 2021, but the campaign as a whole will run through 2021.

This initiative, of course, appeals to consumers cooking at home more than ever due to coronavirus-related stay-at-home orders.

BA awarded its media remit to last year. Since then, the company has rolled out new performance KPIs, attribution models, tracking and tools. Enhanced tracking has helped the company collect everything from impressions and spend to click-through-rate to conversions across all channels and assets. It also often asks for customer feedback, which helps with recipe design and the strengthening of messaging across channels.

BA recently expanded its boxes to offer customization with a "Swap the Starch" option, through which consumers can swap traditional sides in recipes for additional vegetables, chickpea pasta or cauliflower rice.

According to iSpot, BA hasn't utilized national TV since Q1 2020, when an estimated $3.4m targeted Gen-Xviewing programs such as Special Report With Bret Bair, America's Newsroom, Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, Live PD and Home Town. BA did not invest in this channel in 2019, but it did spend around $17.7m in 2018.

So far this year, Pathmatics reports the company earned approximately 3.5b digital impressions via desktop display (45%), Facebook (21%), desktop video (16%), Instagram (10%), mobile display (5%) and mobile video (2%) ads. Top desktop display targeted site destinations included yahoo.com (33%), finance.yahoo.com, reddit.com, foxnews.com and news.yahoo.com. YTD spend of around $14.7m has nearly tripled the roughly $5.1m spent by this point last year. BA allocated around $5.7m toward this channel in 2019 as a whole, only half the $10.6m allocated in 2018.

Additionally, Magellan reports the company aired 341 podcast ads within the past year.

As I briefly mentioned, along with digital display, paid social and podcast, this campaign includes content via digital video (OTT/CTV), influencers, search, affiliate and media integrations and owned channel support through organic social, blog, email and website. This focus on digital channels reinforce that BA's traditionally momvertising target demographic skews toward Gen-Z and millennials. Kantar data reports the company also utilizes print (magazines) and local broadcast. Remember, this campaign marks one of the largest advertising efforts in which BA has ever invested.

Agency & martech readers - Since agency reviews often follow one another, reach out sooner than later for potential creative, digital analytics, PR and/or social media management duties. This huge campaign may signal a goal of switching up BA's creative strategies since it is no longer working with Swift, its former creative AOR since January 2019.