How Imperfect Foods Fuels Growth With a Dedicated Creative Team
Background
A Driven Growth Team With Ambitious Goals
Since its founding in 2015, Imperfect Foods has made headlines with its mission to upcycle discarded food by-products, rescue ingredients and save so-called “ugly produce” from ending up in landfills.
After closing a $72 million Series C in May of 2020 and a $95 million Series D several months later, the Growth Team was ready to double down on new customer acquisitions.
A paid media strategy for social
The growth team focused on social media advertising with branded videos and user-generated content (UGC) that felt native to news feeds.
Design bottlenecks hindered growth
Melissa Brande, the Growth Marketing Manager, spearheaded efforts on TikTok. Meanwhile, Stephanie Graham, the Growth Manager for Paid Social, took charge of Facebook campaigns. And Jairah Said, the Senior Growth Marketing Specialist, focused on influencer outreach and collecting user-generated content (UGC).
Together, this growth team refined their strategies by identifying the best-converting content and iterating from their learnings. To maximize their impact, they had to run new ads and test variations consistently. This meant frequently producing, editing and repurposing creative at a quantity and pace that would overwhelm most design teams.
Challenge
The Growth Team Needed a Dedicated Design Team
We relied heavily on our internal design team to supplement any sort of branded content. We repurposed a lot of creative that wasn't necessarily meant for our social channels and quickly realized it wasn't working, especially on TikTok.
With more campaigns, ads, channels and audiences to test and scale, the velocity and volume of the Growth Team’s creative needs were outpacing their internal design team’s capacity, which was tied up in brand and website projects.
Solution
Plugging Into an Outsourced Design Partner
Bringing on Superside gave the Imperfect Foods' Growth Team the speed and scale they wanted. They also unlocked access to more design capabilities, like motion design.
With motion graphics, they could be more proactive with their influencer program (thanks to fast turnarounds), and they could run more A/B tests to optimize their ad performance.
They repackaged their aids in a variety of ways to see how the first half of the video would compare if we changed up the value proposition. "We just had more freedom to pick and choose on our own terms. We’re really directing a lot of it"—recalls Stephanie.
An extendible solution
As Imperfect Foods expanded operations into more states, they repurposed static ads that had worked in the past with motion-based text overlays localized for each state.
The Growth Team used Superside to build templates they could imitate and iterate upon—saving design hours and money. Thanks to the velocity of content they were producing with fast 12-hour turnarounds, they could also quickly adjust formats and be on more channels.
This UGC video with motion graphics layered on top did so well on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook that it was adapted for television.
Scaling success
Imperfect Foods used the positive performance they saw repurposing UGC and using motion graphics in their ads to inform their future strategy.
“We’re looking at multi-touch attribution to understand the impact of different channels along the customer journey,” said Graham. While a new channel like TikTok may drive a younger audience to their site, is Facebook responsible for driving higher-quality customers? The team analyzed those kinds of metrics to refine their targeting and drive a higher ROI.
While the Growth Team was seamlessly in sync with Superside, the pressure on the internal design team was intensifying due to more product offerings and rapid geographic expansion.
With its range of capabilities and flexible pricing (and thanks to the Growth Team’s positive experience) Superside also became a resource for other internal teams.
Strike up the brand
It was a very last-minute out-of-home campaign for one of our market launches. We needed billboards and pamphlets fast. That project could not have come to life without Superside jumping in and helping out. Our Brand Team was very grateful.
When the Brand Director needed billboard designs for the Imperfect Foods launch in Denver, Colorado, they reached out to the Growth Team who introduced them to Superside.
Partnering with Imperfect Foods' Creative Director, Superside also developed web assets for a site relaunch—crossing more departments and into different teams.
RESULTS
Close Collaboration and Cost-Effective Growth
The caliber of people we interact with at Superside—they’re all collaborative, wonderful, friendly people. I never feel like I can’t request something. We have that relationship with each other where there’s the freedom to talk about it. It’s really very friendly.
In 2021, Imperfect Foods submitted 168 projects, putting the majority of their Superside hours towards motion graphics—a specialization and bandwidth their internal creative team couldn't cover.
Weekly creative calls allowed for openly discussing campaign ideas and creative assets they wanted to build. Growth Manager for Paid Social, Stephanie Graham, remarked that Superside increased design capacity 10X by literally adding hundreds of hours of extra design bandwidth that wasn't there before.
Superside also suggested cost- and time-saving solutions like templating a series of ads for easy iteration and localization. The growth team estimates that they saved $250k by partnering with Superside.
In 2022, Imperfect Foods merged with the like-minded business Misfits Market connecting and co-branding Imperfect Food's online presence with Misfit Market's brick-and-mortar model.
The design within this case study reflects efforts when Imperfect Foods was in its early growth stage, needing a scalable creative partner who could plug into their marketing teams and help them seize growth opportunities.
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