Salted Stone Helps Boxed Water Operationalize a Shift in Messaging: A Social Media Marketing Campaign Case Study

Boxed Water uses recyclable, phthalate- and BPA-free paper that comes from well-managed forests, and partners with the National Forest Foundation to plant two trees for every social post that includes a Boxed Water product and #BetterPlanet.

Their commitment to minimizing their environmental impact goes even further, and includes things like strategically located filling facilities that help reduce shipping-related carbon emissions and the No-Plastic Pledge campaign. This campaign is focused on highlighting the negative environmental effects of traditional single-use plastic water bottles, 

On Boxed Water’s No-Plastic Pledge webpage, visitors learn that 1,500 plastic bottles are sent to landfills every second, and that a plastic water bottle can take 700 years to decompose.

To combat these serious issues, visitors are encouraged to take the No-Plastic Pledge, a 30-day challenge to stop using plastic bottles. Boxed Water even offers a pledge kit to get customers excited about taking on the challenge.

The problem

People liked Boxed Water’s innovative packaging, but many didn’t know about the brand’s other environmental initiatives and overall message.

To get more consumers on board with their mission, Boxed Water needed to a) get the word out about how and why their product is better than plastic bottles, and b) bring attention to other ways that their brand contributes to environmental causes, including their National Forest Foundation partnership, #BetterPlanet initiatives, and the No-Plastic Pledge.

Salted Stone set out to help them achieve those goals.

The Salted Stone approach

Our goal was to operationalize Boxed Water’s messaging around eco-conscious lifestyle change and their mission of environmental and social change. We focused our approach on strategically ramping up the impact of paid ad campaigns and organic social posts to amplify the Boxed Water brand message.

Our first move in May 2019 was diving into a deep analysis of performance metrics in order to revamp the existing No-Plastic Pledge PPC campaigns. This process included new visual designs from the Salted Stone creative team, substantial remarketing, and strategies to identify and connect with new audiences.

Additionally, a strategic social calendar was created to boost the performance of organic social channels through a combination of revised messaging and social voice, new creative assets, and Boxed Water’s own photos.

By shifting messaging and assets to focus more on the brand’s positive environmental and social impact rather than focusing primarily on the products themselves, we were able to move the needle in a powerful way.

The results

Salted Stone and Boxed Water’s combined marketing efforts proved to be successful, as evidenced by stark improvement in social metrics and remarkable ad performance.

"Salted Stone provided us with a robust strategy for the campaign. All the way from giving creative input to a detailed outline of how we could target the "right" audiences and refine those audiences throughout the campaign to bring the highest quality users and potential customers to our site." - Hilary Messink

The No-Plastic Pledge Instagram ad that launched in June had an exceptionally high click-through rate throughout the time it was running, which continued to improve as the ad was monitored and optimized.

Comparing March–May of 2019 with June–August of 2019, Boxed Water saw a significant boost in organic social metrics:

In August of 2019, Instagram metrics were higher than they’d been in 6 months, with 1,071 sessions and 1,660 pageviews.

"We knew that with the large amount of information many consumers are seeing regularly around how bad plastic is would make this type of campaign easy for them to resonate with. But it was really amazing to see how quickly and positively everyone responded to the pledge." - Hilary Messink

Together, the organic social posts and paid ads crafted by Salted Stone helped draw more attention to the No-Plastic Pledge campaign, and demand for the pledge kit skyrocketed by mid-July. 

With a mix of new creative, a refined social voice, and the strategic use of new hashtags, Salted Stone helped Boxed Water operationalize a desired shift in messaging to extend beyond their products, resulting in better customer understanding of Boxed Water’s overall mission and corresponding increases in engagement and revenue.