Pro Snacker Campaign Targets Healthy Men

In January, Almond Board of California launched a multi-media advertising campaign aimed at reaching our "Healthy Men" consumer target in the U.S. Over the past year, we have learned a lot about the almond male target audience; for instance, while men like to snack on nuts, most do not differentiate between the different nuts. We also learned that they seek health and nutrition information from a variety of sources, including online search portals, fitness magazines, doctors, and their wives/significant others.

The goal of this campaign was to reach healthy men with simple snacking solutions at a time when they are actively engaged in information seeking while watching SportsCenter. The campaign featured mini-commercials that were 10-15 seconds long and aired on ESPN SportsCenter during morning and evening time slots. To support the mini-commercial, online banner ads appeared on CBSSports.com and ESPN.com. Several interactive online banner ads were developed for the campaign. Some included the mini-commercial, others an interactive game, but all contained the snacking message "Be a pro snacker with a Handful of California Almonds."

The mini-commercials and online banners directed people to a dedicated Web page for men to learn about the benefits of a handful. The mini-commercials are also available to view at this site.

The campaign ran January through March 2010, and the online banners will continue this spring.

To complement these efforts, the new "Handful of" print advertising campaign, highlighted in the February issue of California Almonds Outlook, simultaneously launched in male-targeted fitness magazines such as Men's Health and Men's Fitness.