Case study · Confectionery
Sconza ran nano and micro creators across four content angles on Instagram and TikTok. 221 posts, 2.68M organic impressions, and a Costco aisle that moved.
The challenge
Launching new, re-igniting a favorite
Sconza Candy had two jobs to do in one quarter. Triple Berry Bites was brand new and needed a reason to exist in shoppers’ minds. Lemoncello Almonds was already a fan favorite, and it needed a second life on national retail shelves.
Both products needed awareness at scale, discovery in the Costco aisle, and purchase intent strong enough to show up in website data. Polished brand ads would have been expensive and easy to scroll past. The content had to come from people shoppers already trust, across audiences that buy candy for very different reasons.
The approach
Balancing newness with nostalgia, told by creators
01
Creator segmentation
The roster was built on nano and micro creators, with select mid-tier accounts for reach. Every creator mapped to a persona: Costco Haulers, Mom & Family, Lifestyle & Entertainment, and Food & Beverage.
02
Content angle diversification
Four angles ran in parallel: The Costco Find, Everyday Indulgence, Hosting & Sharing, and ASMR Moments. Each gave creators a different reason to pick up the bag, so the feed never repeated itself.
03
Platform focus
Instagram carried reach and product beauty shots. TikTok carried watch time and comments. Creators shot native to each platform instead of reformatting one asset twice.
The results
Sweet returns, measured
2.68M
Organic impressions
4.2%
Average engagement rate
359%
Lemoncello product page views
8.3M
Total paid impressions
Highlights
Nano and micro creators turned two Costco products into a content-driven retail discovery machine.
Organic performance beat the benchmark. 221 pieces of content generated 2.68M organic impressions and 1.81M reach at a 4.2% engagement rate, against an industry average of 2 to 3%.
The same creators delivered twice.
Top performers carried strong results across both products, while efficient micro creators produced high engagement on much smaller audiences.
Website traffic followed the content. Site events rose 7% overall. Lemoncello product page views were up 359% and active users on that page up 596%. The Triple Berry page became the site’s number one product page after launch.
Paid boosting added scale on top. Amplifying the best organic posts pushed total impressions to 8.3M and reach to 5.2M, extending the same creative instead of producing new assets.
Comments showed buying intent. Sentiment analysis came back close to 100% positive. Shoppers asked where to buy and tagged friends to go get it at Costco.
Social proof
Creator content landed, and the comments showed real purchase intent
Sentiment came back close to 100% positive. Shoppers asked where to buy, tagged friends, and said out loud that they were heading to Costco. Real comments from under the creator posts.
Insights
Relevance beat reach, and creator-made content carried it into the aisle
Smaller creators, bigger impact
Micro and nano creators out-performed larger accounts on engagement and cost efficiency. Audience relevance mattered more than follower count, every time.
Creator content beat brand content
Sensory close-ups, product-first hooks, and platform-native editing held attention longest. The posts that looked least like ads performed best.
Awareness moved past social
Product discovery, site activity, and purchase intent all moved with the campaign, and paid amplification unlocked additional scale on proven creative.
The content
221 posts, 75 creators, two products
