Now, I normally get starstruck anyway, but seeing a
celebrity eat one of your products
?
I was in heaven!
Our first strong female partner is probably the most
famous of them all, Ellen Degeneres. Ellen has the #1
day time talk show and is the new Oprah of today.
She does something called a “live commercial.” Unlike
normal TV commercials you might see, the commercial
we did for Nut Thins was during her show. The
segment reached five million people watching the
show and Ellen liked it so much, she amplified it on
her social media channels, reaching another 45 million
people. The month that the Ellen commercial aired was
Nut Thin’s largest sales growth period.
Mark:
Ellen was such a great success. Please share
how we built on that learning
.
Kristen:
We approached another huge celebrity, Blake
Lively. Blake Lively is a very popular actress who has
starred in so many wonderful movies, like the Age of
Adeline, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and more.
She also happens to be married to Ryan Reynolds. As
big of a superstar as Blake Lively is, she usually doesn’t
have the time to promote other brands or products
that are not her movies. But, Blake happens to love
Nut Thins and was willing to work with us. On July 9,
she posted a picture of herself and her kids eating a
box of Nut Thins. To show you what kind of person
Blake is, all of the proceeds from that post went to her
favorite charity. The results were phenomenal and it
was our highest engaging social media post to date,
reaching over 20 million people and garnering close to
1.3 million “Likes.” The comments were amazing. Some
never heard of Nut Thins before and went to the store
to buy it just because Blake “told them to.” That’s the
power of celebrities.
We didn’t just stop there, just last month, we worked
with Katie Holmes, who stopped by our first ever
Blue Diamond
Holiday House in New York City. This
event was attended by every magazine and news
publishing house you can think of and having someone
as beautiful as Katie attend was icing on the cake.
She also happened to fall in love with our Wasabi
and Soy Almonds. Her attendance generated over
85 million impressions in entertainment magazine and
online sites like People and Star magazines.
As you can see, there’s nothing quite traditional in
advertising with these examples and that’s what I love
about growing small brands: finding these innovative
and creative ways of reaching new consumers.
Mark:
Who are the next celebrities we can expect to
share their love of
Blue Diamond
products
?
Kristen:
We just finished taping a segment on
Hollywood Game Night with Glee’s Jane Lynch,
featuring our snack almond flavors. It will air this
summer on NBC. I know that our
Blue Diamond
almonds are going to be even more famous than these
celebrities.
Mark:
Kristen, thank you for enthusiasm in growing
our
Blue Diamond
brands and helping us to fulfill the
growth promises to our customers.
Toby Stonelake,
Product Marketing
Manager, Global
Ingredients Division
Mark:
In 2014, with the
start-up of our Turlock
plant, we hired a recent
college graduate to
work on the production
line. Four years and three promotions later, Toby is
putting his marketing degree to work on our recent
almond innovations. His rapid career progression
matches the incredible growth in our almond flour.
Toby:
I was fortunate enough to be selected to a small
team of operators to help commission the first almond
flour line. Knowing full well that almond flour was
PRESIDENT’S CORNER
1 0
A L M O N D F A C T S
