I just read an interesting case study from the Triscuit brand. What was interesting about it wasn't the media it used or how it targeted its customers. It was whom it chose to target. When we think of Triscuits, we think of healthy, whole-grain food. In order to boost sales, you'd expect Kraft (which owns the Triscuit brand) to focus on the demographic that is interested in active, healthy lifestyles. If so, you'd be wrong. Instead, Kraft focused on the home farming movement. How did Kraft get from whole grain to home farming? It understands its customer base. Its customers are interested in healthy eating, but they are also interested in simplicity. (Triscuits are made of only three ingredients: wheat, oil and salt.) Kraft knew that backyard vegetable gardening (or "home farming" for the very serious) is an activity very close to the heart of the core Triscuit consumer. So Kraft kicked off a new campaign called Home Farming. The campaign centers around a website designed to build a community that promotes the joys and challenges of backyard gardening. To support the site, Kraft is partnering with the nonprofit Urban Farming organization to create 50 community vegetable farms in 20 cities, including Los Angeles, Dallas, Detroit, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Tampa. The effort is gaining the support of celebrities such as Ellen Degeneres and HGTV's Gardening by the Yard host Paul James. Other components to the campaign include TV ads, advertorial packages, banner ads, Tweets, and even packages of seeds in four million Triscuits boxes. The results? Triscuit sales are up, and the campaign is out-performing similar multi-channel campaigns by Kraft competitors. Why should printers care? In this industry, we focus a lot of which channel to use and how to structure a campaign that works. Those things are helpful, but only when you start with the right audience. Are your customers targeting the right audience for the message? How did they select that audience? Habit? ("We've always done it this way")? Guess ("This seems like a good idea")? Or research? What can you do to help them figure it out? After all, a successful campaign starts with the right target audience.