Home farming

Triscuit had three ingredients and a hundred years of history. It was losing share to younger brands: snacking had become about speed, something you did on the way to something else.

The research found the opening. Nearly two-thirds of Americans said they wanted to grow food at home. Three in four preferred foods with a few simple ingredients. And of the people who hadn't grown anything the year before, 56% gave the same reason. No time. No space.

Triscuit had spent a century arguing that food made of a few simple ingredients is worth slowing down for.

Home farming made that argument something people could do rather than agree with.

Seed cards for basil and dill went onto four million boxes of Original and Reduced Fat, plantable straight into the ground with instructions on pack.

A digital platform gave people somewhere to go next: a crop guide, recipes that used what they grew, a live map of gardens around the country, and a community of home farmers answering each other's questions.

A partnership with Urban Farming built 50 community farms in the first year and 65 across 20 cities in the second, five of them in low-income housing developments where fresh food was hardest to buy.

Media and events made it visible. Ellen DeGeneres grew a garden on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Home farming Day filled Madison Square Park, with a postcard station, seed kits planted on site and a café serving farm-fresh Triscuit recipes.

Home farming tied a movement to a product, and a product back to what the brand had always believed.

The campaign moved sales and earned recognition well beyond the category, including formal acknowledgement from the US Secretary of Agriculture.

PR Week Awards — Best Use of Research/Measurement.