Nothing like healthy competition
Nov 17, 2020
ARLINGTON, VA – This September, in honor of National Rice Month (NRM), USA Rice partnered with the food community curators at FeedFeed on a month-long recipe contest to encourage the use of U.S.-grown rice and inspire FeedFeed’s community to share their favorite ways to enjoy our great grain. The contest boosted the number of USA Rice Instagram followers while driving quality organic user-generated content from FeedFeed’s network across the country.
Consumers were served five posts promoting the contest and daily Instagram story reminders through FeedFeed’s social platforms, and the NRM contest was featured on FeedFeed’s homepage banner.
Participants uploaded an image of their dish to Instagram using #thinkrice and tagging USA Rice for a chance to win premium prize packs. Entries were judged on composition, styling, and overall quality of the food image, creativity of ingredient combinations or overall recipe, and innovation on rice usage. Winners were selected by USA Rice and FeedFeed.
The contest received 360 entries and generated 406,400 engagements and more than 13.6 million impressions. The three winning recipes were Butternut Squash & Maitake Mushroom Biryani, Cheesy Curry Arancini, and Saffron Herbed Spiced Rice.
Each winner received Think Rice promotional items, a Le Creuset 7.25-quart dutch oven, Le Creuset 3.5-quart braiser, Le Creuset mini round cocotte, and an Aroma Housewares 8-cup rice cooker.
“We are thrilled with the success of this program and the creativity of the participants,” said USA Rice Vice President of Domestic Promotion Michael Klein. “Our U.S.-grown messaging and information reached new audiences and clearly resonated as the campaign produced more than 400,000 engagements in a single month. Our goal is to keep these new audiences and followers engaged and informed about all things U.S.-grown rice moving forward because as they use rice and share it, they become very effective ambassadors for us.”