- Kind Snacks today launched a series of digital activations promoting its recent Kind Almond Acres Initiative, a three-year regenerative agriculture pilot project in California, per details shared with Marketing Dive.
- Activations include a partnership with Snapchat for an augmented reality (AR) lens promoting regenerative agriculture and a delegated landing page where consumers can follow the initiative through long-form video and virtual reality (VR) experiences.
- The project represents an additional commitment by Kind to sustainably source its ingredients and is the newest move by the brand to leverage education and the environment to appeal to consumers.
Kind is usually outspoken about its sustainability ties, with its latest effort proving no different. The Almond Acres Initiative and immersive digital activations tied to this system could help the brand boost consumer loyalty, arriving at a time when shoppers — particularly Gen Z — increasingly prioritize environmental considerations.
As a part of the newly launched Almond Acres Initiative, Kind will test regenerative agriculture practices across 500 acres of almond orchards owned by the brand’s supplier, Olam Food Ingredients, in Madera, California. The effort is supposed to advance public research and a recent commitment by Kind to source 100% of its almonds — the essential ingredients in its products — from orchards that use regenerative agriculture practices on a mass balance basis by 2030.
In an attempt to succeed in consumers, Kind today (April 18) launched an AR experience on Snapchat that permits users to “visit” the Almond Acres Initiative by utilizing their camera to go searching the orchard and choose various icons, each offering sustainability information and playful filters, like the power to rework into an almond or a bee.
Also featured within the project is an interactive landing page that helps consumers track progress and find out about specific technologies being tested. Through the positioning, users can participate in a VR tour of the orchards, where they will likely be challenged to search out five “hotspots” to achieve additional information concerning the initiative. Marketing the project to consumers through gamified, immersive experiences could help the brand higher communicate its value.
“We know that regenerative agriculture could be difficult to know. We know our consumers want to interact in learning methods to be kinder to our planet, and that’s the reason we’re welcoming everyone into the living, learning lab that’s the KIND Almond Acres Initiative,” said Kelly Solomon, CMO at Kind, in a press release.
Additional cause-driven efforts round out the campaign. They include a partnership with the University of California, Merced, a Hispanic-serving institution, to award the first-ever “KIND to the planet” scholarship. The brand can be now a member of the California Water Action Collaborative, a company dedicated to improving the state’s water security.
Kind’s latest moves follow other marketing plays, including the February launch of its first business in over a 12 months, titled “I See Almonds.” Kind also recently partnered with “Top Chef” host Padma Lakshmi for a speakeasy-style pop-up restaurant in New York.
The snack marketer last 12 months saw double-digit growth, with marketing efforts guided by CMO Solomon, who was appointed to the role in January 2022. Kind was acquired by Mars in 2020 for an estimated price of over $5 billion.
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