Capstone: campaign plan and post-campaign report

This capstone brings the course together. You will follow a complete campaign for a fictional brand from brief to final report, applying each lesson's tools in order. The worked examples show one reasonable set of choices; your own capstone project should apply the same steps to a brand and product of your choice, with your own reasoning and numbers. The brand, creators and figures below are invented for teaching.

The scenario

Ridgeline Bars is a small company that makes high-protein snack bars aimed at hikers, climbers and trail runners. The bars are sold through the company's website and in about 300 outdoor and grocery stores. Ridgeline is launching a new plant-based flavor in the spring and has a creator budget of $90,000 for a ten-week campaign. Its gross margin on website sales is 45 %, the average website order is $48, and the company estimates that a new website customer generates $95 of gross profit over their lifetime, including the first order. Last year's small creator test produced a cost per acquisition of about $38 on tracked website orders.

Step 1: objectives and KPIs

Ridgeline's business objective is to make the new flavor one of its top two sellers within six months. The creator program cannot do that alone, so the team defines two campaign objectives: drive 1,200 new website customers during the campaign window at a CPA no higher than $45, and raise awareness of the new flavor among outdoor enthusiasts in the target regions, measured by a brand-lift survey. A secondary objective is to obtain at least 25 licensed short videos for use in paid social over the following year.

Step 2: audience and creator tiers

The target audience is adults aged 22 to 45 who hike, climb or trail run at least twice a month, care about ingredients and performance, research gear through short video and long-form reviews, and are skeptical of overly polished ads. Secondary audiences include plant-based eaters who are active but not specialists. The team chooses a pyramid: two mid-tier outdoor creators for credibility and reach, 14 micro creators across hiking, climbing, trail running and plant-based cooking, and 30 nano creators who are existing customers, recruited through tagged posts and an application form.

Because Ridgeline sells nationally in the US, the line-up includes creators in mountain, Pacific and northeastern regions where most of its retail stores are, plus two bilingual Spanish-English creators.

Step 3: selecting creators

The team builds a long list of 220 creators from platform marketplaces, a discovery tool, tagged posts and referrals. A basic screen for country, niche, platform and size leaves 95. A performance screen using median reach and engagement by reach over the last 90 days leaves 60. Authenticity checks, content audits covering two years and disclosure-history checks leave 52, from which the team selects the 46 needed using a weighted scorecard: audience fit 35 %, content quality 25 %, performance 20 %, authenticity 10 % and cost efficiency 10 %, with brand safety as a gate.

Step 4: budget and buying models

The team allocates the $90,000 budget across creator fees, usage, amplification, product and shipping, software, measurement and contingency. Mid-tier creators receive flat fees with 90 days of paid usage. Micro creators receive hybrid deals: a flat fee plus 10 % commission on tracked sales. Nano creators receive product, a modest flat fee of $150 for one video with disclosure, and an affiliate link.

Step 5: briefs, contracts and compliance

Each creator receives a two-page brief with the objective, audience, one key message ("real trail fuel, now plant-based"), mandatories (product name, link or code, disclosure at the start of each post), approved claims with substantiation (protein content per bar, ingredient list, plant-based status) and prohibited claims (no weight-loss or medical claims). Contracts use the brand's master agreement with campaign statements of work covering deliverables, one revision round, usage terms, authorization for paid amplification, 30-day category exclusivity for mid-tier creators, an authenticity warranty, analytics requirements at 7 and 30 days, payment within 30 days of delivery and a balanced morals clause.

The disclosure guide follows the FTC's Endorsement Guides and its guidance for influencers, and the team confirms that no reviews or testimonials in the campaign could breach the FTC's Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule.

Step 6: workflow and launch

Working back from a launch date in week 8, recruitment runs in weeks 2 to 4, kits ship in week 5, drafts are due at the end of week 6 and approvals finish in week 7. The program lead estimates 4 hours per micro or mid-tier creator and 2 hours per nano creator, or 16 × 4 + 30 × 2 = 124 hours over ten weeks, and assigns a coordinator for 15 hours a week to support the lead.

Step 7: amplification and measurement

After 48 hours of organic posting, the paid team tests the eight strongest videos by completion rate and click-through rate and scales the best three. To measure incrementality, Ridgeline concentrates amplification in test regions and holds back matched control regions with similar historical sales. A platform brand-lift study runs on the amplified content.

The post-campaign report

Results after 30 days are shown below, and the worked examples analyze them.

The first example deserves comment. Honest reports note when a target was missed, as here, and then explain the fuller picture with clearly labeled additional analysis. The CPA target of $45 was set on tracked orders and was missed. Incrementality and lifetime value show the campaign was still worthwhile, but the report should say plainly that tracked CPA was above target and recommend how to improve it: the landing page converted below forecast, and three micro creators delivered most tracked sales.

Writing the recommendations

Ridgeline's report ends with recommendations. Convert the three micro creators with the lowest CPA into six-month ambassadors on hybrid deals. Keep one mid-tier creator for awareness in the autumn and drop the other, whose reach was high but whose audience fit proved weaker than expected. Rebuild the landing page and retest. Continue regional holdouts each quarter, because tracked sales captured only about 84 % of measured incremental orders. Use the 31 licensed videos in paid social and track whether they lower the brand's CPA compared with studio content. Tighten disclosure training, since four posts needed fixes.

Your capstone project

For your own capstone, choose a real or fictional brand and product and prepare: a one-page measurement plan with objectives, KPIs, definitions and targets; an audience description and creator tier strategy; a selection process and scorecard; a complete budget with buying models; a brief and a contract term sheet; a timeline worked back from launch with staffing estimates; an amplification and incrementality plan; a risk register; and a mock post-campaign report with invented but internally consistent results, an honest assessment against targets and recommendations. Check every calculation, state every assumption and make sure the plan would be legal and fair in your country.