Wholesome has spent years championing organic, fair trade sweeteners in a category long dominated by conventional brands. Known for their commitment to regenerative agriculture, Wholesome launched two new products — an Organic Cane Sugar at Target and an Organic Dark Brown Sugar at Walmart — and needed to prove to retail buyers that shoppers would not only try them, but come back for more.

Breaking into new shelf space with an innovative, premium product is never straightforward. Wholesome needed more than strong sales numbers — they needed to show buyers exactly who was buying their sugar, how they were using it and whether it could grow the category, not just steal share from existing products.

To support both launches, Wholesome partnered with Social Nature to run geo-targeted sampling campaigns — one aimed at Target shoppers for their Organic Cane Sugar and one at Walmart shoppers for their Organic Dark Brown Sugar.

Both campaigns were built around a custom post-trial survey designed to generate the kind of retailer-specific insights that make a buyer meeting impossible to walk away from. Wholesome used the data to demonstrate clear usage occasions for their products, benchmark themselves against competitors and show that their shoppers were trading up from private label — bringing incremental dollars to the category rather than simply switching brands.

To maximize impact at each retailer, Wholesome and Social Nature worked together to test and optimize the offer strategy throughout the campaigns. Starting with a discount offer to gauge demand, the team identified an opportunity to adjust mid-campaign — and when they did, performance accelerated across the board. By staying close to the data and adjusting their approach together, Wholesome and Social Nature were able to maximize impact at every stage of the campaign.