Carnation sweeten up their brand awareness

With a history of innovation that stretches back to the 1880s, Nestlé’s Carnation Company has produced high-quality condensed milk for over 100 years. From condensed milk and caramel to evaporated milk and cream, Carnation is a go-to for family bakers, high-end culinarians, and virtually anyone with a bit of a sweet tooth!

Because Pinterest pairs an “always-on” audience looking for baking inspiration with moment-specific content (i.e., Mother’s Day baking inspiration), it was the ideal platform for Carnation to tap into an audience that included both regular and infrequent bakers. With Christmas just around the corner, it was a match made in heaven. Carnation’s key objective was to boost brand awareness, while they also wanted to drive traffic to the website.

Key results:

Carnation’s Pinterest campaign was built around short and engaging video ads that showed Pinners how to make fudge, cheesecake, and other recipes at home. The brand worked with Pinterest on Pin creation – ensuring adherence to the platform’s best creative practices – and produced a mixture of max-width and standard-width video ads.

Carnation, in partnership with Zenith, cooked up a broad targeting strategy to deliver ads to large audiences seeking inspiration, and supplemented its campaign with keyword/interest targeting focusing on the dessert and baking audience. Also, the campaign was split into two parts: a primary awareness campaign and a secondary traffic campaign, designed to encourage Pinners to visit Carnation’s website for simple, easy-to-follow recipes.

Carnation achieved strong results on the platform, and the campaign helped to drive awareness and agreement with the brand’s core attributes. There was a 5.3% boost in brand awareness among Pinners who bake weekly, as well as a 4.2%¹ bump in purchase intent from monthly bakers. Furthermore, Carnation comfortably achieved all its campaign goals, attaining a 27% VCR rate and a 1% CTR.

Bottom line: Carnation’s use of short and sweet video ads with clear and consistent branding helped to make their campaign instantly recognisable, lifting brand awareness within the target audience.

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