One in three Australians have tried kangaroo meat, and one in five (21%) are open to it. An abundant resource, kangaroo is 98% fat free and high in iron and zinc. There’s an argument that it’s the healthiest meat on the market.
The main hurdle is familiarity: a lot of people don’t know how to cook roo, or what meals to put it in.
Browse the shelves of your local Coles, Woolies or Aldi and you’ll find K-Roo, Australia’s leading retail kangaroo brand. The company has been offering this healthy, sustainable and distinctly Australian meat since 1987.
If the health benefits weren’t enough, K-Roo goes beyond already strict government regulations to set its own ethical and environmental standards. There’s a deep respect for animal and ecosystem; roos are always wild harvested, and a top-to-tail approach ensures nothing is wasted.
As a brand, K-Roo ticks every box. But the company knew that its marketing had room for improvement. Having long prioritised paid ads and email, organic social media was a big missing piece.
The aim
If you want to spread the good word about the good meat, there’s no better vessel than organic social media. When you see someone crafting a quick, easy, healthy and delicious dish out of kangaroo, you think to yourself ‘that looks great… I could do that’.
K-Roo understood this – they just didn’t know where to start. But NINKI did.
The opportunity: strengthen K-Roo’s social media presence to help consumers build familiarity with the product, and credibility and trust with the brand.
Available exclusively through supermarkets, K-Roo wasn’t looking to make direct sales. Social media would be used to influence broader perceptions: to make roo a go-to meat, something that you wouldn’t think twice about grabbing at the supermarket. The following objectives were identified:
- Increase social media reach and follower numbers.
- Use influencer and creator partnerships to build trust and visibility.
- Show how to use roo meat through user-generated content (UGC).
- Educate people on the nutritional benefits of kangaroo.
Goals set, it was time to kick them.
The approach
The first cab off the rank: producing compelling content.
While NINKI-produced content was a key part of the effort, the real value was in UGC and influencer partnerships: channels that gave K-Roo access to audiences far larger than their own.
Short-form video was the priority, built around two key content pillars:
- Educational content that shared the nutritional benefits of kangaroo.
- Recipe-led content that showed people how to cook the meat.
These pillars ended up forming a Venn diagram with a nice little sweet spot: fitness influencers. They’d teach their health-conscious followers about the benefits of roo while cooking up protein-charged feasts.
NINKI found, vetted and managed creators like @slightly_enhanced, @_elliewilsonfitness__ and imogen.russell who injected K-Roo goodness directly into the feed of their followers, exposing the brand to hundreds of thousands of new eyes.
This was far from the polished ad creative K-Roo had used in the past. Lo-fi and authentic, the short-form videos were designed to feel like a discovery, and to be shared far and wide. High-protein recipe inspo, meal prep ideas, nutrition knowledge bombs, a day in the life (feat. K-Roo); the angles were endless, and the returns were impressive.
The results
Across a 90-day span, K-Roo’s organic Instagram content generated 278,000 views. Even more impressively, a full 93.8% of those views came from non-followers: the brand gained exposure to more than a quarter million sets of eyes without spending a cent on paid advertising.
Another 192,000 views were earned on Facebook across the first six months. 86.3% of that engagement came from non-followers, leading to a 72.2% increase in visibility on the platform.
NINKI also collaborated with K-Roo’s marketing manager to align creator content with promos and marketing campaigns, so social media engagement converted into supermarket sales.
The enhanced social media strategy has since gone from strength to strength. Kangaroo meat is becoming approachable, accessible, even mainstream, particularly within the fitness community.
K-Roo is an established, aspirational brand selling a healthy, high quality product. But these traditional strengths only matter on social media if you can clearly spell them out. Our smart strategy did exactly that, and more people are beginning to bounce into their local supermarket to pick up a packet of roo because of it.
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