We’re thrilled to share that Maxwell took home a gold Cascadia Creative Award in the Influencer Campaign category for our work with USA Pulses!
The Challenge
USA Pulses is a nonprofit on a mission to grow awareness and consumption of pulse ingredients — think chickpeas, lentils, dry peas, and beans — across the U.S. food system. Their work touches farmers, food innovators, restaurateurs, and everyday consumers. But reaching younger audiences? That’s where things get complicated.
There are many misconceptions with the ingredients: how to cook them, skepticism about flavor, questions about digestive comfort, and limited awareness. It was time to active the right channels to make an impact among this discerning audience.
The Strategy
Knowing that younger consumers trust real people over brand messaging and turn to social media for recipe ideas, we built a comprehensive influencer education and content campaign designed to do two things: genuinely educate influencers about pulses and equip them to authentically inspire their followers to add pulses to plates.
We partnered with six Instagram and TikTok food and nutrition influencers — creators whose audiences already cared about affordable, healthy eating — and set them up to create recipe and educational content over the course of the year. We also hosted an influencer immersion trip, bringing creators to the source: surrounded by pulse farmland, they toured farms and production facilities, learned about nutrition, and sat down to pulse-forward meals that made the farm-to-plate story real and delicious.
The Results
With a limited budget, the numbers exceeded expectations across the board:
Why It Mattered
This campaign worked because it was built on education first. Influencers who genuinely understand an ingredient — who’ve stood in the fields where it’s grown, cooked with it, asked the hard questions — create content that resonates differently than a sponsored post. That authenticity translated directly into impact, and we’re proud that the Cascadia judges recognized it. Here’s to more beans, more lentils, and more gold.