FALL 2022

ABOUT THE SWEETEST WEEK OF ALL

also spanned the virtual trade with a large-scaled e-commerce campaign with reaching an estimated 100,000 online shoppers. Additionally, mk² created a powerful momentum for digital and social media outreach to maximize the impact of this year’s ISPW. On social media, an effective activation through so called dark post advertising, reached European culinary communities as well as new audiences creating high attention for NCSP. Broad campaign activities on respective NCSP social media channels which included feed posts and trendy recipe videos, inspired the community to jointly celebrate the ISPW and to purchase North Carolina sweetpotatoes. Within only one week, ISPW social media activities successfully reached over 600,000 contacts, more than 500,000 total engagements and 1,800,000 total impressions.

For the International SweetPotato Week 2022 (ISPW) in April, mk² created tremendous buzz in Europe to actively promote the orange superfood, increase awareness and efficiently raise sales volume. While partnering with Europe’s #1 discounter, Lidl, inNorthern andEast ern EU (Sweden and Poland), ISPW promotions for Germany took place in association with several partners suchas ofGermany’s top supermarkets REWE and its subsidiary wholesale house Penny in addition to Germany’s #1 discounter ALDI. During the pre-easter week, the strongest sales weeks in food retail, NCSP branded POS material was distributed inside of nearly 40,000 sweetpotato boxes. Thus, a total volume of 240 metric tons of the NC orangesuperfoodwasmovedfeaturing information about NCSP’s origin, quality, health benefits, taste, and ver satility. The inspiring character of the flyers reached consumers at point of-sale, boosting impulse purchases,

leading to a huge impact on sales in all participating markets. A call-to-action element in the POS brochures invited consumers to take part in a raffle for an airfryer. This raffle garnered almost 19,000 participants to register. To be precise, there were exactly 18,778 costumers who took the time to explore North Carolina sweetpotatoes through the raffle and learn about the benefits of NC’s orange superfood! There were six winners in total: • Germany – Ulrike Reidl (from Straubing in Southern Germany)&VanessaRouenhoff (from Düsseldorf in West Germany) • Sweden – Mees Hartsink (from Torsås) & Caroline Lundquist (from Älgarås – both in the in South of Sweden) • Poland – Romana Piotrowska (from Lenartowice in Central Poland) & Iwona Arciszewska (from Nowodworce in the East of Poland) Beyondthebrick-and-mortarretail activities, this wide-ranged promotion

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