Alessandro Savelli launched his cook-at-home fresh pasta brand, Pasta Evangelists in 2016 using his grandmother's pesto recipe for the first meal. The company aims to bring artisanal Italian pasta and ingredients into ordinary homes, allowing home cooks to recreate the flavours of Italy with minimal fuss and effort. As a relatively small brand prior to the pandemic, Pasta Evangelists were keen to gain brand awareness as the nation locked down and people pivoted to at-home cooking.

As the pandemic hit and the UK entered lockdown, Fifty pivoted its work to focus on helping Pasta Evangelists understand the rapidly changing consumer landscape and create media strategies to meet the moment. Audiences of DTC brands within the meal kit landscape are typically hard to understand due to limited social followings, so we decided to use their CRM data as a launching point of understanding their core audience and broadening their reach.

Initially, we sought to understand Pasta Evangelists' core and prospective audience. We then continually ran studies to reprospect and retarget based on how this audience was evolving as the brand achieved greater awareness. The initial study revealed an early adopter audience focused on food, success and culture with tribes including Business Leaders and London Foodies. As we grew awareness, later CRM studies revealed more mainstream adoption with tribes such as New Mums surfacing, which then impacted our media targeting strategies.

During the initial lockdown (March-June), Fifty's approach helped Pasta Evangelists acquire 30,000 new customers and we delivered a 66% improvement on their cost per new customer (CPA). Pasta Evangelists' meteoric rise during 2020 resulted in the world's largest pasta producer, Barilla, acquiring a majority stake in the company in January 2021.

Fifty can help scale your spend. Fifty delivered a remarkable improvement on CPA and managed to achieve well below the target CPA. Fifty can help you enter new markets: Pasta Evangelists' fresh pasta kits were initially seen as a luxury for niche foodie audiences. Fifty helped grow awareness and push the brand into the mainstream. Fifty can grow with your brand: The magic of our partnership with Pasta Evangelists is our dynamic data. Every quarter, we reanalyse their CRM data, providing fresh insights on new customers to drive new targeting strategies.