Best Choice® Family of Brands Presented with Golden Penguin Awards at NFRA
KANSAS CITY, Kan., October 16, 2023 – AWG Brands, the private brands of Associated Wholesale Grocers, Inc. (AWG), received the NFRA’s Gold Penguin Award for Best Private Brand Campaign during the NFRA Convention on October 10th, 2023 in San Diego, CA. AWG Brands was given this award for their efforts in supporting the NFRA’s March Frozen Food Month, which focuses on promoting the frozen category to consumers in order to increase the sales and consumption of frozen foods. The Golden Penguin Award is used to recognize the best marketing and merchandising efforts in support of March Frozen Food Month. The Private Brand Campaign category requires the participant to create a sustained marketing campaign utilizing multiple forms of advertising, digital communication, print communication, or in-store execution.
“Frozen food is one of the fastest growing and evolving categories”, said Tye Anthony, Vice Chairman – Frozen for NFRA and Sr. Vice President of Merchandising for AWG. “We are constantly looking for new ways to grow AWG Brands in this category. By supporting the NFRA and March Frozen Food Month, we are showcasing the convenience and benefits of the AWG Brands frozen food products to consumers.”
AWG Brands supports the NFRA annual campaign that promotes the frozen category to consumers to increase the sales and consumption of frozen foods, called March Frozen Food Month. In 2023, the AWG Brands campaign was called Frozen Food Madness, a bracket challenge campaign that allowed consumers to fill in their predictions. The bracket matched multiple Best Choice® Family of Brands frozen food products against each other. The consumers chose which products would win each match-up, resulting in one product winning the Frozen Food Madness campaign. The bracket was sent out to consumers through the Best Choice® Family of Brands bi-monthly email and posted on the Best Choice® Family of Brands Facebook and Instagram pages.
Voting for a product winner was conducted on the Best Choice® Family of Brands Facebook and Instagram pages. A match-up between two of the Best Choice® Family of Brands products would be posted every couple of days. The consumers voted for their favorite product by commenting which product they preferred on the post. The product that received the most votes on Facebook and Instagram combined would advance to the next round. The product that won the Frozen Food Madness campaign was the Best Choice® Frozen Peach Cobbler, a newer item to the Best Choice® Family of Brands product line.
The Frozen Food Madness campaign was an organic marketing campaign with no budget allotted to the posts. The Best Choice® Family of Brands Facebook saw a 2.58% increase in post engagement compared to February 2023. The Best Choice® Family of Brands Instagram also saw an increase of 1.25% in the same time frame. Large match-ups, like breakfast items, desserts, and ice creams, received the most engagement with likes, comments, and impressions.
“We saw many spirited interactions between the consumers and increased engagement when they started tagging each other in the comments,” said Rachel Corkill, AWG Brands senior marketing specialist. “We look forward to bringing back the Frozen Food Madness campaign in 2024.”
