PBN Digital was approached by an exciting and ambitious brand, La Vie™, whose mission is to become the most significant vegan pork brand globally. The brand's quirky, guilt-free approach to marketing has garnered significant traction. In the first 18 months since launching, they had formed partnerships with major European retailers such as Carrefour, Sainsbury’s, and Albert Heijn. Moreover, they had collaborated with prominent restaurant chains, including Burger King. PBN Digital was approached to become La Vie™’s dedicated marketing partner during their major 2023 fundraising campaign, with the goal of raising at least €1 million.
PBN Digital was approached by an exciting and ambitious brand, La Vie™, whose mission is to become the most significant vegan pork brand globally. The brand's quirky, guilt-free approach to marketing has garnered significant traction. In the first 18 months since launching, they had formed partnerships with major European retailers such as Carrefour, Sainsbury’s, and Albert Heijn. Moreover, they had collaborated with prominent restaurant chains, including Burger King. PBN Digital was approached to become La Vie™’s dedicated marketing partner during their major 2023 fundraising campaign, with the goal of raising at least €1 million.
PBN Digital prioritized a paid media plan that included Meta, Google Search and Performance Max ad campaigns. We also provided guidance to a secondary agency that supported LinkedIn and programmatic display ad campaigns. The main challenge we faced was a small <€35,000 ad budget. This meant achieving €1 million via ads would require a 29+ X ROI, which we could not realistically claim was likely. Thus, we had to think outside the box, with our plan being three-fold:
1. WE CREATED CREDIBILITY FOR LA VIE™ & DREAMT BIG
We knew we had to highlight La Vie™’s early impressive strides as a company. For example, by July 2022, they had successfully launched their patented vegan bacon in 13 European countries, resulting in over 2 million products sold. As well as highlighting these achievements across the campaign, we also supported La Vie™'s ambitious public target of over €5 million. By setting a high bar, it made the €1 million goal more achievable. Given La Vie™'s remarkable 350+% revenue growth between 2022 and 2023, we were confident in the financial potential of the campaign goal. Every department at PBN, from social media and graphic design to ad ops and media buying, was aligned in the belief that this initiative would be a resounding success.
2. WE CAME UP WITH A ROBUST PAID MEDIA PLAN
Our Head of Ad Ops - with over 12 years experience - was deployed months ahead of the La Vie™ fundraise public launch date to 1) research relevant interest groups; 2) test pixels and other technical integration with CrowdCube; and 3) launch ‘lead gen’ campaigns.
Lead gen campaigns are when a database of interested ‘leads’ is built up. Leads normally represent email addresses. With this campaign, this ad strategy was very important because La Vie™ didn’t have a significant email database when the partnership began. Our main lead gen campaign generated signups at a CPL of €0.49. This not only generated emails, which would be used to market via email marketing (which we consulted La Vie™ on) but also informed which interest groups performed the best, which was invaluable information for our media buying team later in the campaign.
When the investment campaign launched, we segmented our paid promotions into 'top of funnel' (focusing on targeting new audiences), 'middle of funnel', and 'bottom of funnel' (warm leads i.e. interested people). While we anticipated strong results from the ‘bottom of funnel’ Plant Based News engagers, evidenced by a CPC of €0.60, we understood they weren't as scalable as the 'top of funnel' audiences. This top segment included 'vegan', 'vegetarian', and 'plant-based' interest groups, totaling over 30 million people. This provided scalability for the paid campaign.
We allocated a significant budget to the PBN ad account through ‘whitelisting’. This is one of the most effective strategies used by PBN Digital. Because by having access to the Plant Based News ad account, this means our Meta ads (launched across Instagram and Facebook) have a unique third party stamp of approval, by Plant Based News, an award-winning plant-based media platform. These mission-aligned endorsements - in the form of Meta ads - often provide increased engagement and decreased signup costs. For example, we have a case study - amongst many others - demonstrating a 30% reduction in sign-up costs, compared to the client’s ad account.
The successful whitelisted ad campaigns for La Vie™ were underpinned by a comprehensive creative process, where static and video assets were implemented and A/B tested across various interest groups in the Meta ad network. Ad examples included phrases like ‘Join The Vegan Bacon Revolution', and the results were evident with 50% of all website sessions coming from whitelisted and managed ad account activities. Within the whitelisting ad sets, the PBN website visitors and engagers were 15% cheaper than broad audiences, which started to perform better 11 days into the campaign.
3. VIRAL ORGANIC CONTENT
Plant Based News boasts over 3.5 million core supporters, and as such it was crucial to engage this audience. First, we crafted an advertorial article titled "Vegan Pork Brand La Vie Launches Crowdfunding Campaign", shared across our main platforms including Instagram (1.3 million followers), Facebook (750,000 followers), LinkedIn (70,000 followers), X (120,000 followers) and youtube community (570,000 followers). Although our audience is global, and the primary aim of this campaign was to encourage people in the UK to invest, the organic posts were important for a variety of reasons. Most notably, they helped get the announcement of the fundraiser onto google news and in turn across various outlets including on Vegconomist and The Grocer.
Our team also traveled to Paris for La Vie™’s exclusive launch event, capturing content as it unfolded, which was then disseminated across the Plant Based News platform in real time. This content generated over four hundred thousand impressions, including a reel produced by PBN Co-Founder Robbie Lockie, garnering over 270,000 views. This reel was also used in paid campaigns generating a CPC of €0.21. Additionally, we sent an email to our vast 85,000-strong database, obtaining a staggering 47.1% open rate, with well over 3,000 clicks.
In both paid and organic campaigns, we emphasized two key points:
1) PBN Digital's and La Vie's shared mission centered on compassion and sustainability. We spotlighted their previous achievements, including saving over 90,000 pigs and cutting down 2 million kg of CO2 emissions.
2) We also created buzz around high-profile investors in La Vie, such as celebrity actress Natalie Portman and renowned venture capitalists Partech and Capagro.
PBN Digital prioritized a paid media plan that included Meta, Google Search and Performance Max ad campaigns. We also provided guidance to a secondary agency that supported LinkedIn and programmatic display ad campaigns. The main challenge we faced was a small <€35,000 ad budget. This meant achieving €1 million via ads would require a 29+ X ROI, which we could not realistically claim was likely. Thus, we had to think outside the box, with our plan being three-fold:
1. WE CREATED CREDIBILITY FOR LA VIE™ & DREAMT BIG
We knew we had to highlight La Vie™’s early impressive strides as a company. For example, by July 2022, they had successfully launched their patented vegan bacon in 13 European countries, resulting in over 2 million products sold. As well as highlighting these achievements across the campaign, we also supported La Vie™'s ambitious public target of over €5 million. By setting a high bar, it made the €1 million goal more achievable. Given La Vie™'s remarkable 350+% revenue growth between 2022 and 2023, we were confident in the financial potential of the campaign goal. Every department at PBN, from social media and graphic design to ad ops and media buying, was aligned in the belief that this initiative would be a resounding success.
2. WE CAME UP WITH A ROBUST PAID MEDIA PLAN
Our Head of Ad Ops - with over 12 years experience - was deployed months ahead of the La Vie™ fundraise public launch date to 1) research relevant interest groups; 2) test pixels and other technical integration with CrowdCube; and 3) launch ‘lead gen’ campaigns.
Lead gen campaigns are when a database of interested ‘leads’ is built up. Leads normally represent email addresses. With this campaign, this ad strategy was very important because La Vie™ didn’t have a significant email database when the partnership began. Our main lead gen campaign generated signups at a CPL of €0.49. This not only generated emails, which would be used to market via email marketing (which we consulted La Vie™ on) but also informed which interest groups performed the best, which was invaluable information for our media buying team later in the campaign.
When the investment campaign launched, we segmented our paid promotions into 'top of funnel' (focusing on targeting new audiences), 'middle of funnel', and 'bottom of funnel' (warm leads i.e. interested people). While we anticipated strong results from the ‘bottom of funnel’ Plant Based News engagers, evidenced by a CPC of €0.60, we understood they weren't as scalable as the 'top of funnel' audiences. This top segment included 'vegan', 'vegetarian', and 'plant-based' interest groups, totaling over 30 million people. This provided scalability for the paid campaign.
We allocated a significant budget to the PBN ad account through ‘whitelisting’. This is one of the most effective strategies used by PBN Digital. Because by having access to the Plant Based News ad account, this means our Meta ads (launched across Instagram and Facebook) have a unique third party stamp of approval, by Plant Based News, an award-winning plant-based media platform. These mission-aligned endorsements - in the form of Meta ads - often provide increased engagement and decreased signup costs. For example, we have a case study - amongst many others - demonstrating a 30% reduction in sign-up costs, compared to the client’s ad account.
The successful whitelisted ad campaigns for La Vie™ were underpinned by a comprehensive creative process, where static and video assets were implemented and A/B tested across various interest groups in the Meta ad network. Ad examples included phrases like ‘Join The Vegan Bacon Revolution', and the results were evident with 50% of all website sessions coming from whitelisted and managed ad account activities. Within the whitelisting ad sets, the PBN website visitors and engagers were 15% cheaper than broad audiences, which started to perform better 11 days into the campaign.
3. VIRAL ORGANIC CONTENT
Plant Based News boasts over 3.5 million core supporters, and as such it was crucial to engage this audience. First, we crafted an advertorial article titled "Vegan Pork Brand La Vie Launches Crowdfunding Campaign", shared across our main platforms including Instagram (1.3 million followers), Facebook (750,000 followers), LinkedIn (70,000 followers), X (120,000 followers) and youtube community (570,000 followers). Although our audience is global, and the primary aim of this campaign was to encourage people in the UK to invest, the organic posts were important for a variety of reasons. Most notably, they helped get the announcement of the fundraiser onto google news and in turn across various outlets including on Vegconomist and The Grocer.
Our team also traveled to Paris for La Vie™’s exclusive launch event, capturing content as it unfolded, which was then disseminated across the Plant Based News platform in real time. This content generated over four hundred thousand impressions, including a reel produced by PBN Co-Founder Robbie Lockie, garnering over 270,000 views. This reel was also used in paid campaigns generating a CPC of €0.21. Additionally, we sent an email to our vast 85,000-strong database, obtaining a staggering 47.1% open rate, with well over 3,000 clicks.
In both paid and organic campaigns, we emphasized two key points:
1) PBN Digital's and La Vie's shared mission centered on compassion and sustainability. We spotlighted their previous achievements, including saving over 90,000 pigs and cutting down 2 million kg of CO2 emissions.
2) We also created buzz around high-profile investors in La Vie, such as celebrity actress Natalie Portman and renowned venture capitalists Partech and Capagro.
PBN Digital prioritized a paid media plan that included Meta, Google Search and Performance Max ad campaigns. We also provided guidance to a secondary agency that supported LinkedIn and programmatic display ad campaigns. The main challenge we faced was a small <€35,000 ad budget. This meant achieving €1 million via ads would require a 29+ X ROI, which we could not realistically claim was likely. Thus, we had to think outside the box, with our plan being three-fold:
1. WE CREATED CREDIBILITY FOR LA VIE™ & DREAMT BIG
We knew we had to highlight La Vie™’s early impressive strides as a company. For example, by July 2022, they had successfully launched their patented vegan bacon in 13 European countries, resulting in over 2 million products sold. As well as highlighting these achievements across the campaign, we also supported La Vie™'s ambitious public target of over €5 million. By setting a high bar, it made the €1 million goal more achievable. Given La Vie™'s remarkable 350+% revenue growth between 2022 and 2023, we were confident in the financial potential of the campaign goal. Every department at PBN, from social media and graphic design to ad ops and media buying, was aligned in the belief that this initiative would be a resounding success.
2. WE CAME UP WITH A ROBUST PAID MEDIA PLAN
Our Head of Ad Ops - with over 12 years experience - was deployed months ahead of the La Vie™ fundraise public launch date to 1) research relevant interest groups; 2) test pixels and other technical integration with CrowdCube; and 3) launch ‘lead gen’ campaigns.
Lead gen campaigns are when a database of interested ‘leads’ is built up. Leads normally represent email addresses. With this campaign, this ad strategy was very important because La Vie™ didn’t have a significant email database when the partnership began. Our main lead gen campaign generated signups at a CPL of €0.49. This not only generated emails, which would be used to market via email marketing (which we consulted La Vie™ on) but also informed which interest groups performed the best, which was invaluable information for our media buying team later in the campaign.
When the investment campaign launched, we segmented our paid promotions into 'top of funnel' (focusing on targeting new audiences), 'middle of funnel', and 'bottom of funnel' (warm leads i.e. interested people). While we anticipated strong results from the ‘bottom of funnel’ Plant Based News engagers, evidenced by a CPC of €0.60, we understood they weren't as scalable as the 'top of funnel' audiences. This top segment included 'vegan', 'vegetarian', and 'plant-based' interest groups, totaling over 30 million people. This provided scalability for the paid campaign.
We allocated a significant budget to the PBN ad account through ‘whitelisting’. This is one of the most effective strategies used by PBN Digital. Because by having access to the Plant Based News ad account, this means our Meta ads (launched across Instagram and Facebook) have a unique third party stamp of approval, by Plant Based News, an award-winning plant-based media platform. These mission-aligned endorsements - in the form of Meta ads - often provide increased engagement and decreased signup costs. For example, we have a case study - amongst many others - demonstrating a 30% reduction in sign-up costs, compared to the client’s ad account.
The successful whitelisted ad campaigns for La Vie™ were underpinned by a comprehensive creative process, where static and video assets were implemented and A/B tested across various interest groups in the Meta ad network. Ad examples included phrases like ‘Join The Vegan Bacon Revolution', and the results were evident with 50% of all website sessions coming from whitelisted and managed ad account activities. Within the whitelisting ad sets, the PBN website visitors and engagers were 15% cheaper than broad audiences, which started to perform better 11 days into the campaign.
3. VIRAL ORGANIC CONTENT
Plant Based News boasts over 3.5 million core supporters, and as such it was crucial to engage this audience. First, we crafted an advertorial article titled "Vegan Pork Brand La Vie Launches Crowdfunding Campaign", shared across our main platforms including Instagram (1.3 million followers), Facebook (750,000 followers), LinkedIn (70,000 followers), X (120,000 followers) and youtube community (570,000 followers). Although our audience is global, and the primary aim of this campaign was to encourage people in the UK to invest, the organic posts were important for a variety of reasons. Most notably, they helped get the announcement of the fundraiser onto google news and in turn across various outlets including on Vegconomist and The Grocer.
Our team also traveled to Paris for La Vie™’s exclusive launch event, capturing content as it unfolded, which was then disseminated across the Plant Based News platform in real time. This content generated over four hundred thousand impressions, including a reel produced by PBN Co-Founder Robbie Lockie, garnering over 270,000 views. This reel was also used in paid campaigns generating a CPC of €0.21. Additionally, we sent an email to our vast 85,000-strong database, obtaining a staggering 47.1% open rate, with well over 3,000 clicks.
In both paid and organic campaigns, we emphasized two key points:
1) PBN Digital's and La Vie's shared mission centered on compassion and sustainability. We spotlighted their previous achievements, including saving over 90,000 pigs and cutting down 2 million kg of CO2 emissions.
2) We also created buzz around high-profile investors in La Vie, such as celebrity actress Natalie Portman and renowned venture capitalists Partech and Capagro.
PBN Digital prioritized a paid media plan that included Meta, Google Search and Performance Max ad campaigns. We also provided guidance to a secondary agency that supported LinkedIn and programmatic display ad campaigns. The main challenge we faced was a small <€35,000 ad budget. This meant achieving €1 million via ads would require a 29+ X ROI, which we could not realistically claim was likely. Thus, we had to think outside the box, with our plan being three-fold:
1. WE CREATED CREDIBILITY FOR LA VIE™ & DREAMT BIG
We knew we had to highlight La Vie™’s early impressive strides as a company. For example, by July 2022, they had successfully launched their patented vegan bacon in 13 European countries, resulting in over 2 million products sold. As well as highlighting these achievements across the campaign, we also supported La Vie™'s ambitious public target of over €5 million. By setting a high bar, it made the €1 million goal more achievable. Given La Vie™'s remarkable 350+% revenue growth between 2022 and 2023, we were confident in the financial potential of the campaign goal. Every department at PBN, from social media and graphic design to ad ops and media buying, was aligned in the belief that this initiative would be a resounding success.
2. WE CAME UP WITH A ROBUST PAID MEDIA PLAN
Our Head of Ad Ops - with over 12 years experience - was deployed months ahead of the La Vie™ fundraise public launch date to 1) research relevant interest groups; 2) test pixels and other technical integration with CrowdCube; and 3) launch ‘lead gen’ campaigns.
Lead gen campaigns are when a database of interested ‘leads’ is built up. Leads normally represent email addresses. With this campaign, this ad strategy was very important because La Vie™ didn’t have a significant email database when the partnership began. Our main lead gen campaign generated signups at a CPL of €0.49. This not only generated emails, which would be used to market via email marketing (which we consulted La Vie™ on) but also informed which interest groups performed the best, which was invaluable information for our media buying team later in the campaign.
When the investment campaign launched, we segmented our paid promotions into 'top of funnel' (focusing on targeting new audiences), 'middle of funnel', and 'bottom of funnel' (warm leads i.e. interested people). While we anticipated strong results from the ‘bottom of funnel’ Plant Based News engagers, evidenced by a CPC of €0.60, we understood they weren't as scalable as the 'top of funnel' audiences. This top segment included 'vegan', 'vegetarian', and 'plant-based' interest groups, totaling over 30 million people. This provided scalability for the paid campaign.
We allocated a significant budget to the PBN ad account through ‘whitelisting’. This is one of the most effective strategies used by PBN Digital. Because by having access to the Plant Based News ad account, this means our Meta ads (launched across Instagram and Facebook) have a unique third party stamp of approval, by Plant Based News, an award-winning plant-based media platform. These mission-aligned endorsements - in the form of Meta ads - often provide increased engagement and decreased signup costs. For example, we have a case study - amongst many others - demonstrating a 30% reduction in sign-up costs, compared to the client’s ad account.
The successful whitelisted ad campaigns for La Vie™ were underpinned by a comprehensive creative process, where static and video assets were implemented and A/B tested across various interest groups in the Meta ad network. Ad examples included phrases like ‘Join The Vegan Bacon Revolution', and the results were evident with 50% of all website sessions coming from whitelisted and managed ad account activities. Within the whitelisting ad sets, the PBN website visitors and engagers were 15% cheaper than broad audiences, which started to perform better 11 days into the campaign.
3. VIRAL ORGANIC CONTENT
Plant Based News boasts over 3.5 million core supporters, and as such it was crucial to engage this audience. First, we crafted an advertorial article titled "Vegan Pork Brand La Vie Launches Crowdfunding Campaign", shared across our main platforms including Instagram (1.3 million followers), Facebook (750,000 followers), LinkedIn (70,000 followers), X (120,000 followers) and youtube community (570,000 followers). Although our audience is global, and the primary aim of this campaign was to encourage people in the UK to invest, the organic posts were important for a variety of reasons. Most notably, they helped get the announcement of the fundraiser onto google news and in turn across various outlets including on Vegconomist and The Grocer.
Our team also traveled to Paris for La Vie™’s exclusive launch event, capturing content as it unfolded, which was then disseminated across the Plant Based News platform in real time. This content generated over four hundred thousand impressions, including a reel produced by PBN Co-Founder Robbie Lockie, garnering over 270,000 views. This reel was also used in paid campaigns generating a CPC of €0.21. Additionally, we sent an email to our vast 85,000-strong database, obtaining a staggering 47.1% open rate, with well over 3,000 clicks.
In both paid and organic campaigns, we emphasized two key points:
1) PBN Digital's and La Vie's shared mission centered on compassion and sustainability. We spotlighted their previous achievements, including saving over 90,000 pigs and cutting down 2 million kg of CO2 emissions.
2) We also created buzz around high-profile investors in La Vie, such as celebrity actress Natalie Portman and renowned venture capitalists Partech and Capagro.