Influencers have become important drivers of brand success. But after years of using influencers in the same way as every other organic food brand, Australian Organic Food Co were still struggling to break through.

So, while the world was obsessing over the rise of AI, we created a fully integrated campaign that targeted the next wave of influencers – virtual influencers – inviting them to apply for a never-before-seen job role.

Of course, real humans were intentionally caught up in the process, allowing us to target them with our messaging and free samples of our products along the way.

After years of promoting themselves like every other organic food brand, Australian Organic Food Co were struggling to break through in a crowded market. With a limited budget, our brief was to create an integrated campaign that would help us stand out online and in stores, driving engagement, awareness and increasing stockists.

In 2023, the whole world was talking about what artificial intelligence can do. The influencer marketing space was no different, as we saw the rapid increase in artificial influencers like Lil Miquela. These influencers aren't real people made of flesh and blood, but programmed beings made of code and pixel. So, while they look real, they can't actually eat.

Instead of acting like every other organic brand and paying human influencers to say how good our food was, we ran a recruitment campaign for artificial ones instead. Then, we turned their miserable reactions into a fully integrated campaign. Because if they can’t taste our food, our human customers know it’s 100% organic.

The organic food sector is a sea of sameness where brands all act the same, hiring ‘authentic’ influencers to promote their natural products as the healthier choice for real people. But stats show 96% of people don’t trust these influencers at all.

So, we thought, why not go artificial instead?

At a time when everyone was talking about what technology can do, we decided to take advantage of what it can’t do instead – eat our organic food. Shaking up what’s expected of the category to reach a whole new audience and keep our loyal customers interested.

By demonstrating that artificial beings can’t taste our products, we proved to our human customers that our food is 100% organic.

We ran a recruitment campaign for artificial influencers, inviting them to try our real, organic products ­– knowing full well they couldn’t do it.

First, we reached out to them through social media ads and DMs, and invited them to apply through our digital job portal. Lots of human customers tried to apply, too. But we weeded them out with a reverse robot CAPTCHA and consoled them by sending them free samples of our organic products to enjoy with their organic taste buds.

Then, we invited the most promising applicants to our meta-studio to try our products on camera. We turned their miserable reactions into a fully integrated campaign that ran everywhere from film to OOH, social, direct mail and in-store.

We even turned their inability to taste our food into “stamps of disapproval” that appeared on tens of thousands of packs at major retailers across Australia.

The artificial applicants’ failure was our success. Our integrated campaign cut through in the organic food industry, achieving 12x the category engagement rate, and a 315% increase in social impressions compared to our average.

Most importantly, the campaign has resulted in Australian Organic Food Co. products being stocked in over 60 new stores since launch.