How do you keep finding new ways to generate excitement for an annual campaign, so it feels as fresh as its initial launch? When the timing aligns with a major celestial event, you aim for the stars, obviously. 2024 marked our 15th year partnering with Tops to bring their Monopoly promotion to life. The instant-win game ran between March and May to attract shoppers and boost basket size during a time without any major food-centered occasions.

If your brand can hijack something happening in pop culture, you may just create advertising worth advertising. So, rather than shoehorning Tops into the buzz surrounding the April solar eclipse, we celebrated that year’s “Reach for the Stars” theme by sending 1,000 Tops Monopoly tickets into space. Of course, if you don’t have pictures, it never happened. So, we filmed the entire journey to create short- and long-form broadcast spots and video content.

Sales numbers were not available. But anecdotally, the Tops team needs to see a positive return on their marketing spend—especially between the winter holidays and grilling season when it can be tough to keep shopper receipt totals up. So, if the Monopoly promotion wasn’t working, they would put their top hat away for good.