A Bush’s Beans Icon gets likes Love from a whole new audience.

If there’s one thing millennials love it’s a great social media influencer. Research showed 50% feel a personal connection with the influencers they follow, and 92% trust influencers over brands. So, we knew to build authentic brand affinity for BUSH’S Beans, sponsored content wouldn’t be enough. 

Instead, we created our own influencer from scratch, reimagining Duke Bush, a BUSH’s Beans brand character for over 30 years. Duke, the loveable golden retriever who’s historically known for his failed attempts at sharing the secret family bean recipe in commercials, would now spill the beans about his personal life as a celebrity dog on his new Instagram profile, @itsdukebush.

Duke’s Debut

To launch Duke to the millennial masses, he had to make a grand entrance. In June 2019, he hosted his very own VIP party at Petcon in Los Angeles, a national convention for pet influencers. Here he booped noses with some of the most influential dogs on the gram, scooping up over 4K followers in 48 hours.

A Golden Who Can Do It All

Duke’s new career leap meant spilling the beans on his personal life. His love of Taylor Swift, Stranger Things, downward-facing dog, and celebrity life at BUSH’S Beans not only made his feed worth a follow but allowed the brand to speak authentically speak to cultural topics for the first time.

The Golden boy creates his own social fanbase.

Within six months, Duke racked up over 17K followers and over 200MM impressions, exceeding BUSH’S brand presence on Instagram and spawning his own social fanbase: the #Beansprouts. From his new channel, Duke was able to seed new products from BUSH’S Beans and share branded and non-branded content with fans. All this success allowed Duke and BUSH’S Beans to not just be another brand for people to follow but a daily companion in the lives of a completely new audience.