Buy Fresh Buy Local

Industry: Agriculture and Food Marketing

Services Provided:

• Lightweight market research

• Strategic marketing and messaging

• Gamified marketing campaign creation

• Digital and print collateral production

• Marketing automation

Background and Challenge:

Buy Fresh Buy Local of the Greater Lehigh Valley sought to enhance community engagement with farmers' markets and locally produced foods. Despite the availability and benefits of local food systems, consumer perceptions and engagement levels were not at desired levels. The organization needed to better understand these perceptions and reposition locally produced food within the community effectively.

Approach and Solution:

Metamorphosis undertook a rapid and cost-effective market research study, completing it in just three weeks. The findings closely aligned with a later NIH study, showcasing our ability to generate valuable insights quickly and affordably. Our research took only three weeks to produce and our findings mirrored a recent NIH study — except that ours was published six months earlier and for a fraction of the cost (do we think the Federal Government's research network could learn for us? We like to think so!) Based on these insights, we developed a set of core marketing messages tailored to directly address and shift consumer attitudes towards local food systems.

To operationalize these messages, we launched a comprehensive, gamified marketing campaign designed to engage consumers actively. This campaign included a digital game board featuring content-driven "missions," alongside supporting advertising, print collateral, and marketing automation tools. This innovative approach aimed to not only educate but also incentivize consumer participation in the local food economy.

Results:

The gamified marketing campaign successfully attracted new participants, engaging consumers with the local food system in a novel and interactive way. Feedback, testimonials, and user-generated content generated through the campaign provided further evidence of its impact, helping to amplify the core messages and increase overall engagement with farmers' markets and locally produced foods.

Conclusion:

Through strategic market research, targeted messaging, and an innovative gamified marketing campaign, Metamorphosis significantly contributed to shifting consumer perceptions and engagement with the local food system in the Greater Lehigh Valley. This case study exemplifies how understanding community attitudes, coupled with creative and targeted marketing strategies, can effectively promote local food systems and enhance consumer participation.