Increasing sales with digital influencer marketing: the M&Ms case study

By making Influencer Marketing a key part of its digital strategy, M&M's has succeeded in turning it into an effective lever for sales growth.

To celebrate its 75th anniversary, M&M's managed to generate enthusiasm on social media by mobilizing influencers and famous Youtubers around the #MMSFLAVORVOTE campaign. They encouraged consumers to vote for their favorite flavor between Honey Nut, Chili Nut and Coffee Nut, and there were very few abstentions.

Key Learnings :

M&M's has succeeded in maintaining the link with its consumers and engaging them by using influencers who speak to them on a daily basis on various registers (Humor, Lifestyle, Food) and media (YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Vine, Blogs). As a result, interactions on the brand's social media continue to grow by 80% every year. This high visibility has helped maintain the brand's sales requirements.

The growth recorded by M&M's is 8 times higher than the average for the chocolate snacks category.

Results :

• 269 million impressions (PR and Social Media and Influencers impressions), i.e. 179% of targets
• 216 influencer publications
• 14.4 million corporate commitments and 1 million votes
• 17,000 hashtags #MMSFLAVORVOTE

Objectives :

• Generate brand awareness on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the brand by mobilizing Internet users to vote for their favorite flavor (Honey Nut, Chili Nut or Coffee Nut).
• Increase purchase intentions and sales
• Get 125 million impressions on social media

The campaign:

It opened with a video from American actor Tony Hale, best known for his role in the series Veep. He invited Internet users to vote for their favorite M&M's flavor among three varieties. To maximize the campaign's visibility and engage as many consumers as possible, the calls to vote were repeated by influencers from a variety of universes and audience sizes: actors, professional YouTubers, mommy bloggers, lifestyle influencers and more. All published content with the hashtag #MMsFlavorVote.

Influencers:

True celebrities like Lisa Koshy (12 million followers on Instagram, and 9.6 on Youtube), more modest influencers with several tens of thousands of followers (like Food blogger Stacey Home Maker) but mainly intermediate influencers with 100,000 and 200,000 followers.

Star influencers:

• Liza Koshy
• Markaaaay 1.2 million subscribers
• Comedy duo Rhett & Link4.4 million Youtube subscribers for whom M&Ms sponsored one of their video episodes

Video specialists at social media :

• Darius Benson became famous thanks to his parodies on the social network Vine, 390,000 subscribers on Instagram, 240,000 on Youtube and 470,000 on Facebook
• YouTubeur with 104,000 subscribers Dany Gonzales and 114,000 on Instagram
• Comedian Matt King has 204,000 followers on Instagram, 68,000 on YouTube, and 108,000 on Twitter.

Food influencers:

• Jennycookies 68 00 followers on Instagram
• Stacey Homemaker 12,500 followers on Instagram

Lifestyle influencers :

• The glam farm house 107,000 followers on Instagram
• Alexia Rayee 246,000 followers on Instagram

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