Idahoan director of retail marketing on continued post-COVID strategies

In the latest issue of CORE, we connected with Wes Myer, director of retail marketing for Idahoan Foods, for our article "CPGs after the pandemic: 4 critical marketing opportunities." Here, we share Myer's thoughts on the three marketing strategies he tested during COVID that he'd like to continue.

1. Act on data

A CPG brand has so many data points at its fingertips. Are brands armed with adequate resources to leverage data sets—and not just interpret the data but act on it? Because those are very different things.

2. Adapt on the fly

We essentially built an entire program from scratch in early March to address the spike in demand of our shelf-stable mashed potato products. We hit the ground running, figuring out ways to adjust, adapt and completely change our marketing message to make it relevant for that time and that customer. Based on buying behavior and the data we monitored weekly, we were able to see that we had an influx of new buyers—millions of new households that came in over the course of six months.

3. Reach new audiences

To reach some of our new, younger customers, we ran a TikTok campaign for the first time. The #mashoutchallenge featured a custom dance and song. Some TikTok influencers who have a ton of followers featured our products. We also highlighted recipes. That was all paid media, but it was very eye-opening for us. It drove a ton of impressions across a new audience.

For more content like this, download the full second issue of CORE.

Image credit: Portrait By Braxton Wilhelmsen