Making Huber & Holly a delicious online brand [UPDATED 2022]

We partnered with Huber & Holly, a new & exciting digitally-native brand with a first mover advantage in the freshly-churned ice cream market in India. We were brought on board when there was only 1 store in Ahmedabad and tasked with creating brand awareness and a community built on a very strong product and brand story.

The Huber & Holly team brought with them a deep expertise in ice-creams, F&B and in-store experience. The attention to detail they brought to the customer experience made our job a lot easier. Our job was to tell their story authentically online – and attract people to the in-store experience as thought of and conceived.

Easy? Let’s see how we did it.

0-15+

Stores - Nationwide

36K +

Instagram Followers

10%+

High Organic Engagement Rates

What we do

Social Media Management
Content Creation
Web Design & Development
Paid Social
Paid Search & Display

Industry

F&B

Platforms

Instagram
Facebook

Challenge

To create a delicious digital native brand.

We were excited when the H&H team approached us to take over the digital responsibilities for the brand. Many of us had been to the physical space and already had an appreciation for the attention to detail that showed. Since then, we have worked on a variety of activities to grow their presence online – right from creating content, building a brand website and an instagram community that thrived on great food, drink & of course ice-cream!

I came in to this engagement with some trepidation – as one does with a young brand – but was totally taken away by the ownership and commitment Bonoboz showed to making the story of Huber & Holly their own. Loads of initiative to try new stories, formats, content and all with a keen eye on driving the results we needed. I am grateful for the tremendous start and momentum that they gave this young brand and helped us make the transition to expanding outside Ahmedabad very successfully.

Further, the ability to adapt, experiment and grow the brand as the needs of the platforms, content and customers changed is well appreciated. It’s not easy to find partners that will walk with you towards a common goal, as one team – and I feel the Bonoboz team, with their expertise and digital capabilities, has worked with my team to this end.

Roli Shrivastava

Head of Marketing, HRPL Pvt Ltd

What we didwe did

Phase 1 – Launch & community building
Aligned with the awesome marketing team at Huber & Holly with an ear to the customer.

We were able to identify products to highlight and create visibility for. We always knew that the features of the food alone would not be enough, we would have to find a tone of voice, maintain consistency and wrap a story (interest value).

This was done through a combination of content buckets:

Signature product launches that go viral, including getting picked by Buzzfeed

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Huber & Holly (@huberandholly) on Apr 15, 2018 at 11:05pm PDT

Topical events integrated with product – 9 nights, 9 new flavours for Navratri
Community engagement campaigns

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A post shared by Huber & Holly (@huberandholly) on Apr 23, 2018 at 4:37am PDT

Relatable video content

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A post shared by Huber & Holly (@huberandholly) on Dec 30, 2017 at 9:18pm PST

Short, food appeal videos

Influencer meets in Ahmedabad, Mumbai & Hyderabad to create buzz & top-of-mind awareness

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Huber & Holly (@huberandholly) on Nov 27, 2017 at 4:40am PST

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A post shared by Huber & Holly (@huberandholly) on Jan 23, 2019 at 3:59am PST

Store announcements made cool

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A post shared by Huber & Holly (@huberandholly) on Sep 19, 2017 at 5:47am PDT

This focus on giving the community what it craved for without losing touch with the brand promise led us into campaigns which generated high awareness & engagement. The constant creation of new content formats – and channels (feed, polls, stories, videos) made it a brand to engage with and tell your friends about.

Phase 2 – Engagement & growth [Updated for 2022]

Another transition we made for the brand was to adapt to reels and generate store videos that were snappy, relatable and delicious looking. We worked on retaining and increasing engagement rates by making content that go people to drool and share.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Huber & Holly (@huberandholly)

On the paid front, we were very nimble and relied on metrics to guide our spends. All content that was performed well early was amplified for reach and following. New store launches were geo-targeted and advertised among a very specific geography.

With a good combination of content, brand story and amplification, we saw quick results – but also results that translated to business.

The great thing about the engagement was that it often led to conversations among people, while our product was just the trigger. This meant real conversations, real customers.

Results

Organised influencer meets to launch stores in Hyderabad and Mumbai which clearly showed an up-tick in awareness and in-store sales. Subsequently helped store launches in Rajkot, Baroda, Pune, Bangalore and Surat.

Thriving Instagram community growth from 113 followers –> 11.4k followers phase 1.

And for phase 2 of growth, scaled the community 36k followers and counting. There may not be a upper limit to the aspirations of this brand and we are very excited to see how far we can take it.