When you are a food company like MorningStar Farms, your main goal is to get people to try your vegetable based foods so they will know that healthy can taste good. Well, that’s exactly what they did this summer at the “Way to Veg” experiential marketing tour of the U.S. Designed to engage current customers as well as to introduce their products to new ones, the “Way to Veg” marketing venture was a successful summer sampling tour loaded with good food, health information, and fun experiences. Experiential marketing, which can be described as a marketing message you can feel, touch, or view in a particular space, is seeing a rise in recent years. Companies and brand ambassadors are looking for fun and unique ways to engage consumers in hopes of making their brands stand out. MorningStar Farms hit a home run with their “Way to Veg” food truck tour and introduced people to a healthy and delicious option.
The marketing venture began in Telluride, Colorado in May at the Mountain Film Festival. The eye catching green, retrofitted MorningStar Farms branded Flying Cloud Airstream was on a mission. Fully equipped with a working kitchen, a freezer, and plenty of room to work, their goal was to set out on a summer sampling tour America would not soon forget!
“There’s a growing openness around eating veggie protein and the MorningStar Farms tour is designed to give people experiences grounded in the versatility and flavors of their food,” said director, brand and innovation marketing at Kellogg’s Frozen Veggie Foods Todd Smith. “The more the brand can provide opportunities for consumers to try recipes with MorningStar Farms veggie protein, the more approachable and accessible it feels to everyone.”
Owned by Kelloggs, the vegetable based brand MorningStar Farms created this interactive and informative experiential marketing tour to introduce folks to the brand itself and its delicious vegetable based food offerings like their Thai Curry Bowls, Veggie Burgers, and other healthy meals. The food truck experience allowed attendees to try delicious foods with a chef demonstration, participate in educational games, and even watch a trailer for their documentary series, “The Veg Effect,” that shows how consumers can easily incorporate more healthy vegetables into their daily diets.
The MorningStar Farms “Way to Veg” food truck offered a variety of experiences designed to introduce consumers to their products and engage them. Armed with a freezer filled with prizes and products, attendees learned that eating more vegetables was an easy and healthy alternative by dining on chef-prepared menu items, listening to MorningStar Farms brand ambassadors teach about “veggie cuisine”, and walking through a “Vegecation” game about vegetables and their value in our diets. Happy participants were awarded prizes to encourage healthy eating such as water bottles, vegetable peelers, and more.
The fun and informative summer tour that began in May in Colorado included stops at popular festivals throughout the United States and ended in September in Los Angeles.
The goal of the summer road tour by MorningStar Farms was to create a closer bond between the consumer and their healthy veggie brand by immersing the consumer in a fun and memorable experience. When this happens and folks have a positive experience, they are likely to associate those emotions with the MorningStar Farms brand, which is crucial to the success of the company.
