Reneé Rapp x Sweetgreen: Campaign Analysis
On September 12th, sweetgreen, a restaurant chain serving custom-made salads, and Reneé Rapp, an up-and-coming pop singer and ex-Mean Girls The Musical star, announced their collaboration to be dropped the next day. Sweetgreen’s app now features “The Reneé Rapp Bowl” until October 23rd, allowing fans to order her go-to bowl easily. The announcement was made with an elaborate Sweetgreen-themed photoshoot, reminiscent of a magazine feature. Since the photoshoot felt so editorial, it drew in the attention of many, making it more effective than a simple quick marketing shoot.
Many fans took to social media to praise the brand for it’s proper execution of what they deem Gen-Z is looking for when it comes to social media marketing and collaborations. Although analytics regarding the campaign have not been made public, both parties have received lots of praise online for the amount of effort put into the campaign. As social media becomes commonplace for brand sponsorships and collaborations, there is an increasing amount of poorly executed collaborations such as the Tinx x Chipotle collaboration in Canada where the main ad had an eerie resemblance to a poorly photoshopped youtube thumbnail. Another reason as to why this collaboration may not have been successful is also due to the fact that Tinx had no connections to Canada, nor did she have a majority Canadian audience. In fact, in the article linked above, she states that it was “her first time visiting Toronto” and she had only been to Montreal once prior.
Tinx Bowl (CNW Group/SkipTheDishes)
In contrast, what makes Reneé Rapp’s collaboration much more successful is the authenticity that was brought into this joint venture. Long time fans have known of Reneé’s obsession with Sweetgreen for a long time now, citing her obsession with tweets and comments.
In the video, Reneé also adds some clips of her in the past, discussing her obsession with sweetgreen as well as her team’s concern to add a personal touch to the collaboration.
You can find the link to the original video here.
One can easily tell that this collaboration was not forced and rather, it happened organically, out of pure love for the brand, which benefits both parties and drives exposure. For sweetgreen, this allows them to reach their target audience in a new way that sets them apart from its competitors. Rapp’s fanbase is women around the ages of 18-25, similar to sweetgreen’s target age group. The quote below is directly from Nathaniel Ru (CBO at sweetgreen)‘s LinkedIn post, again reinforcing the fact that this collaboration stemmed from a love of the brand itself.
“A few months ago, Renee sent us a video message about her obsession for our spicy cashew dressing and the amazing team at her local store in Toluca Lake. At sweetgreen, we choose partners that love the brand the way all of our best customers do. ”
All of these factors contributed to the successes of this risky but amazing campaign. While this has certainly been done before, the social media landscape has been oversaturated with quick, low effort influencer collaborations lately, and putting in massive effort like this really stands out.
Key takeaways regarding branding and collaboration:
Stay true to your brand
The brand did not pay her to lie about loving sweetgreen and instead asked the simple question of what she loved about sweetgreen and based the campaign off of that. Gen-Z and Gen alpha audiences want to see brand collaborations that are authentic and real, not motivated by a sweet business deal. When choosing influencers or collaborations, it is important to make sure that they suit your brand image and also have a genuine love for your product in oder to deliver the most effective campaigns.
No one likes ads.
This concept is surprisingly simple however it is extremely hard to achieve. The reason why traditional print and digital ads are becoming less and less effective is because of over-saturation. Everyday, people are being bombarded with advertisements, whether that be online or offline. How an ad campaign stands out is by not being an ad. The creative directors that worked on this project familiarized themselves with Rapp’s fanbase, and with the knowledge that editorial magazine shoots often caught the attention of many, they sought to recreate the style to captivate the audience without them realizing that it was an ad right away. The boldness of the main image (featuring Rapp dressed in a sweetgreen bag) both delivers a shock factor and a clear message of who this collaboration is for.
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