Twizzlers taps Facebook lens for 'World Smile Day'

Dive Brief:

Twizzlers rolled out a branded Facebook lens that superimposes a virtual candy rope and brand logo over real videos of users in its latest campaign, "You can't be serious with Twizzlers," in honor of World Smile Day on Oct. 6, according to MediaPost. The campaign also includes seven TV spots, a long-form video, content created by six social media influencers and hashtag #Twizzlering to connect fans and serve as a hub for user-generated content.
The Hershey Company brand initially claimed the lens was the first brand partnership for the Facebook feature, which launched in March, but later retracted the claim, MediaPost reported. The brand is still an early adopter of the feature. Users can access the lens by clicking on the camera or Stories sections in the Facebook app.
The campaign originally launched in spring 2016 based on "poking serious people and catching their unserious reactions," according to Mona Hasan, creative director at CP+B, the agency behind the campaign. "This filter is our way of loosening them up."

Dive Insight:

Since the launch of Twizzlers' campaign last year, the brand is experiencing sales gains for the first time in three years, according to executives cited by MediaPost. In the past three months alone, sales for the brand are up 2%.

The company points to its insights around what customers want from life — laughs and relief from boredom — as a reason for the campaign's success. A key takeaway for social media marketers, therefore, is the importance of understanding their audience's interests, preferred platforms, as well as what playful features they're likely willing to engage with.

The use of Facebook to deliver a lens is interesting because Snapchat and Instagram are most closely associated with visually-driven brand engagements. The MediaPost writeup suggests that the feature hasn’t caught on with brands on Facebook itself given that Hershey believed it was running the first branded partnership seven months after lenses rolled out on Facebook before pulling back on that claim. Still, the Twizzlers campaign suggests brands are starting to look for larger audiences for their visual strategies.

With the entertaining branded effort, Twizzlers is taking another stride toward making the candy brand fun and innovative while engaging consumers in a socially shareable fashion. The visual-based tool will likely attract younger users who are spending more time with mobile apps and social platforms. These consumers of social media and YouTube content are particularly familiar with app features to add filters, masks, text, emojis and stickers to photos and videos they share online, making Twizzlers' new features generally accepted by young consumers of mobile media.