Sweetening things up: How In The Raw® uses video ads to win audiences’ attention

January 13, 2023 | By Jareen Imam, Sr. Content and Editorial Manager

In The Raw® products
coverage of CES

This blog post is a part of CES coverage from Amazon Ads. During the conference, which took place January 5–8, 2023, in Las Vegas, we showcased fresh insights, trends, and products that can help brands enhance their marketing strategies and grow their businesses.

As audience fragmentation grows with the emergence of new digital channels, brands are looking for more ways to stand out and engage consumers through creative and innovative marketing strategies.

At CES, one of the most influential technology conferences in the world, Amazon Ads sat down with brand leaders and agency partners in our content studio to discuss ways they are connecting with audiences, staying top of mind, and inspiring brand love and loyalty. At the 2023 conference, we interviewed Candice Farrokhnia-Giotopoulos, director of marketing and e-commerce for In The Raw®, a brand of natural sweeteners including sugar, stevia, agave, monk fruit, and honey, as well as organic, vegan, gluten-free, and non-GMO options.

During our interview, Farrokhnia-Giotopoulos discussed how In The Raw® was able to connect with customers and promote their natural sweetener products through a creative video campaign that was developed with the help of Amazon Ads and Tastemade, a video network that offers food and travel-related programming for online audiences. Dive into the full interview below.

Tell me about the holiday baking season campaign that In The Raw® launched with Amazon Ads and Tastemade. What made it special?

We worked with Tastemade to produce custom videos and invested in high-impact takeovers across their social channels. We integrated this into our full-funnel media program with Amazon Ads to help maximize our impact and try and bring new consumers into the brand. This combined creative and media approach set us up to cut through the clutter in sweeteners, generate engagement, and purchase intent with consumers in a meaningful way.

What were your brand’s goals for the campaign?

Our goals were to drive awareness and engagement with recipe videos, reach new consumers, and ultimately drive purchase intent.

This campaign used a video-first approach. What inspired this marketing strategy, and why was that important for your brand?

In a cluttered digital world where you have just moments to capture your audience’s attention, it is important for us to inspire them with content that’s authentic and concisely illustrates how to incorporate our products in key family or special moments. We wanted to make sure we delivered delicious and memorable content, and make a branded impact in an era where short-form videos are protagonists.

How did this campaign use the full-funnel approach, and why was that important in building brand awareness and reaching audiences?

We connected with audiences at scale by attempting to reach them at every point along their purchase journey on Amazon.com, through individual ad formats including Streaming TV, Fire TV, online video, Sponsored Brands video, and Tastemade social media channels.

More specifically, we used Streaming TV ads to help gain awareness and reach, online video ads, and Sponsored Brands video ads for consideration. And we used a sponsored page within the Fire TV experience to help audiences discover our main products, creating a one-stop-shop experience.

Consumers have more content to watch than ever before. Knowing that, how does your brand stay top of mind with your customers while also reaching new audiences?

By reaching audiences throughout the funnel with premium video content that inspires usage and is seasonally relevant. We strategically launched right before the holiday baking season to capture additional glance views as consumers were getting into the “baking” and entertaining mindset.

What’s a challenge that In The Raw® is seeing when it comes to engaging and connecting with audiences online? And how is your brand solving for those challenges?

The challenge is capturing consumers’ attention in an authentic way and identifying the right channel that reaches our relevant audience to connect with new consumers and drive brand loyalty.

It’s important to cast a broader net with a full-funnel strategy to try and reach consumers along the purchase journey with optimized content that clearly showcases that our high-quality, great-tasting products are dependable for your day-to-day needs.

What’s the secret to a great ad?

A great ad inspires, grabs your attention, and makes you think about it. Combining sight, sound, and motion are the keys to success.