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READ IT NOWHow Johnsonville built winning ads with Amplify
Johnsonville, one of America's most beloved sausage brands, has been using Zappi Amplify since 2020. What started as a beta trial has since grown into a disciplined, iterative testing practice embedded in their ad development process.
Key results
4 rounds of early to late stage testing
for Keep it Juicy campaign - landing both sales impact and brand impact in the green before final production
Won a Silver Effie Award for Keep It Juicy,
developed and refined with Amplify
Turned weekend turnaround times
into a competitive advantage - identifying a winning direction by Monday morning on a new product launch
I used to test with consumer data once at the end of the campaign - it was expensive, slow, and by the time results came in, there wasn't much to act on. With Amplify, it's cost-effective and fast, so we can test and iterate multiple times.
The challenge
The limits of late-stage testing
For Karen Kraft and the Johnsonville insights team, the traditional approach to ad testing had some friction: it happened once, late in the process, when there was little room to act on what they learned. When COVID hit in 2020, that friction came to a head - Johnsonville had a tested campaign ready to go, but the world had changed and it was no longer relevant. Faced with the need to produce new creative in lockdown, they turned to Zappi for iterative testing with consumer insights.
Solution
Testing as a diagnostic, not a verdict
Johnsonville's response was creative and resourceful - their head of marketing and head of MarCom formed their own two-person internal agency, writing scripts, hiring a voice actress, and turning existing footage into testable ads. The Amplify results were strong, and the experience reinforced what would become their core approach: using Amplify iteratively throughout ad development, not as a one-time validation tool.
Implementation
From concept to campaign
The Keep It Juicy campaign illustrates what an iterative testing practice looks like in action with their external agency partners. Johnsonville first tested a rough cut with Amplify, which included scratch voiceover and stock footage. Sales impact scores came back strong, but brand impact scores were light, giving the team a clear signal: they needed to make the brand work harder. That insight shaped how they approached production, and as the ad evolved through subsequent rounds, Amplify diagnostics helped them identify what to keep and what to cut — down to the level of a single cartoon clip that ran one beat too long. When the final audio was added, scores held steady, confirming that they had the winning version. That same responsiveness also served them on a recent new product launch – when an initial spot showed room for improvement, the agency sent three alternative cuts directly to Karen. She tested them over the weekend and arrived Monday with a clear direction.
Impact
A new way of working
Amplify shaped how Johnsonville's insights function works with their creative agency. Because Amplify surfaces detailed diagnostics, Karen can show up to agency conversations with consumer data rather than just subjective opinions. That collaborative dynamic paid off at the Effie Awards, where Keep It Juicy won a Silver Effie - a result Karen attributes in part to how Amplify helped them develop and refine the winning creative.
