Sun Pacific – DSL Portfolio

Cuties & Mighties: Surprise, delight, and
substantial social media growth

b2b social media campaign

Reviving reach and record-levels of engagement for two legacy brands you love.

Background

Sun Pacific is a produce powerhouse, but you probably know them as the folks behind beloved brand, Cuties. They produce oranges, tomatoes, grapes, clementines, kiwi, and tree fruits, shipping more than 75 million boxes of fresh fruit sold each year.

brief

DSL worked with Sun Pacific to elevate the social media content, amplification, and engagement strategy for two of their popular brands, Cuties citrus fruit and Mighties kiwi fruit. Our brief? Keep the brand relevant and top-of-mind with customers year-round — while supporting nationwide B2B sales goals with retailers.

challenge

The Cuties brand accounts had fallen flat, and still focused on traditional, ‘kid-friendly snack’ positioning despite being the most recognized clementine brand with a wide audience. The social media calendar focused on branded graphics surrounding holidays and seasons. With no paid social advertising, reach had stalled. Mighties lacked a clear strategy and effort resulting in minimal engagement.

Bring back the joy. Embrace the weird. Test everything.

Our approach:

DSL introduced a new content series, refreshed brand personalities, and seasonal activations based on discoveries uncovered from social listening. Our approach was brand and channel-specific, and included creating the “cutest corner of the internet” for Cuties fans on Facebook/Instagram— a bright spot in a divisive place.

For Mighties, their mischievous-looking mascot became our inspiration for a fun brand voice.

When your brand has high brand awareness, your strategy needs to shift. So we asked:

What wouldn’t they expect from us?

our social media strategy

An integrated approach to content, channel, and paid.

content strategy

UGC, helpful tips, delicious product shoots, and gamification formed the base of our content strategy.

channel strategy

Our approach to copy and community management shifted with the channels. On Facebook, we had a community of household grocery shoppers 500,000+ strong to entertain — skewed towards older women. We kept a playful tone and mixed in lots of ‘we ask, you answer” content which lifted comments. On Twitter, we monitored untagged brand conversation and engaged directly to create surprise and delight moments.

embracing paid

Since the “on-season” for Cuties ramps up during October-November and ends in the spring, we designed our paid media campaigns to match. While low season focused on organic social media engagement, the on-season activities paired content with paid media to amplify top-performing posts to over 2 million shoppers nationwide via Meta and Twitter advertising.

results = sustained growth

DSL reversed an audience decline and contributed to a substantial lift in YoY social and business KPIs across the board in year one (and onwards).

Highlights included:

All while using only 50% of the allocated paid budget.

Throw in some unexpected celebrity moments, an official Disney partnership, and lots of surprise and delight, and you have one successful year on social — with many major moments since.

Content Strategy Snapshot

For Mighties, we leveraged mascot “Fuzzy” to make content that was playful, relatable, and just a teeeny bit unhinged.

A real partnership with one of the world’s most beloved brands is hard to come by — and harder to get approved. We worked hand-in-hand with the Disney brand team to develop co-branded content series that supported each other and performed.