Toffee manufacturer Enstrom Candies has launched a digital video campaign emphasizing its tradition as a go-to gift in hopes of boosting its mail-order business.

Jim Simons, fourth-generation co-owner, says the Grand Junction, Colo.-based company focused heavily on breaking into candy aisles and building wholesale business over the last five to six years. During that period, the company’s mail-order division — Enstrom’s original business — received less marketing and advertising attention.

“Now that our wholesale has taken off and it has been growing on its own, we can pull back on the wholesale ads and reinvest and try to grow our mail-order company a little bit,” he says.

Enstrom enlisted Vladimir Jones, a Denver-based marketing and advertising agency, to study the brand and determine the best way to increase its exposure. CEO Meredith Vaughan says customer feedback revealed that Enstrom’s products had the distinction of being an ideal gift among them.

As a result, Vladimir Jones created the “Giving is All We Get,” a play-on-words that reinforces that identity. 

“We really dug into the idea that this was the ultimate in gift giving, both emotionally — communicating something very meaningful and thoughtful — as well as the gift that is foolproof — that no matter what, if you give an Enstrom gift, your recipient will be thrilled,” Vaughan says.

The completely digital campaign features two video series. One includes 30-second videos that illustrate how to entertain with help from Enstrom. The second series is comprised of quirky clips showing Enstrom “failing” at other tasks by taking the literal interpretation. For example, the “How to Pick a Lock” video shows someone selecting a particular lock from a lineup of them.

Enstrom Candies “How to Pick a Lock”

The videos show “we don’t have to spend time doing much else, thinking about other things because giving is so important to us and that’s really what we own,” Vaughan says.

After five months of planning and production, the campaign launched in September. Appearing on Enstrom’s social media and YouTube accounts, the videos have received 300,000 video view completions. Paid search revenue has increased by 49 percent.

Simons says Enstrom won’t know how the campaign will affect sales until after the main mail-order season, which runs from after Thanksgiving to Dec. 15-20. More than three-fourths of Enstrom’s mail order business comes during that period.

Nonetheless, customers seem to be enjoying the clips, Simons says.

“People have been watching these videos and going straight to the website from the videos,” he says. “It looks like there has been a lot of great reaction to the videos.”

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