Maple from Canada is leveraging the popularity of dating apps to tap into its target market in the U.S. The brand, which represents more than 13,300 maple farmers, and agency partner Rethink are making overtures to Americans through sassy verbiage like, “tap that.”

David Marino, the brand’s director of promotion and market development, tells strategy it’s leaning into the pop culture phenomenon of “cuffing season” in the fall, when singles are most actively looking for partners. As part of its strategy, Maple from Canada is “activating our diaspora of single Canadians living in the U.S. and using them as ambassadors to get Americans to embrace pure maple syrup.”

Until Nov. 15, singles across the States can participate by swiping on their favorite dating app, matching with a Canadian expat and sending a picture of a brunch receipt to get reimbursed up to $65 USD.

Marino says one of the challenges is breaking into a market where Americans predominantly use corn syrup over the common breakfast staple in Canada. “Some consumers even confuse the different types of syrups,” he says. “Therefore, too many people don’t understand why they should pay a premium for maple syrup. So our job there is to make Americans realize that not all syrups are equal, and that maple syrup is the real deal.”

Last year’s Rethink Montreal-led initiative, “Bill the Maple,” also used the compensation idea.

It urged Americans to ask for pure maple syrup, claiming that Canada would reimburse them. In less than a week after its launch, it got a lot of earned media traction and pure maple syrup sales increased by around 4% in select tracked supermarkets such as Kroger and Winn-Dixie.

The Québec Maple Syrup Producers have been working with Rethink since 2019, but it’s only in 2022 that the U.S. market was added to the mandate. Rethink is AOR the PPAQ for both the Canadian and American markets.

The U.S. audience target is broad, with content marketing more focused on foodies.

There is a relatively small budget for the U.S. market, with OOH targeting neighbourhoods in New York City with a concentration of popular brunch joints, targeted ads in dating apps and ads and content integration in columns and podcasts focused on love and dating.

“We did have digital and OOH executions for the last two years, but they weren’t mandatory nor pre-planned from the get-go,” Marino says. “We rather started with the big idea and then determined that these channels were relevant.”

Rethink is working with CrossMedia for the media buy in the U.S., and the budget spend is similar to previous years,

“What has changed, though, is that we’ve evolved our approach since we started working with Rethink for the U.S.,” Marino notes. “We used to spend most of this budget in content marketing, influencer partnerships and hyper-targeted campaigns. We still do a bit of that, but we’re now trying to better breakthrough by doing some PR-able work.”