Truvia®
Cargill owns both the ingredient Truvia® stevia leaf extract and the tabletop consumer product, Truvia® natural sweetener. RF|Binder has developed a campaign to help re-define the sweetener category – focusing on improving consumers’ and industry influencers’ impressions of stevia and clearly setting Truvia® natural sweetener apart from other artificial sugar substitutes.
RF|Binder kicked-off the campaign with a “First Taste Moment” at an actual greenhouse in Rockefeller Center in July 2008. The event created a powerful context for telling the Truvia® story, reinforcing Cargill’s strategic assets as a global producer of agriculture and food. It reinforced the brand positioning “made from a leaf not a lab.” Following the FDA GRAS no objection, we launched an integrated marketing campaign to support full retail distribution – including consumer sampling events, advertorials and media outreach. As food and beverage companies started to introduce new products with Truvia® rebiana, we leveraged the news for both trade media – showcasing its versatility across product categories (beverages, yogurt, ice cream, and confectionary) and for consumer media providing them additional products to cover. In addition, RF|Binder has produced multiple videos educating consumers, influencers and media about the product and the corporate responsibility program around the making of the product. RF|Binder continues to create both consumer and social media engagement programs to drive continued trial and awareness of the product and to tell the Truvia success story in business and trade media as the brand expands globally.
The campaign was successful in positively differentiating Truvia® natural sweetener from competitors, with Truvia® accounting for 63% of all stevia coverage. Extensive media has been garnered among top trade, business and consumer publications, positively emphasizing the great taste and health benefits of Truvia® natural sweetener. In just three years since the launch, Truvia® is now the #2 sweetener in the U.S. overtaking Equal and Sweet N’ Low. Overall, the public relations campaign has garnered more than 500,607,435 impressions with 92 percent of the coverage being positive or neutral.