Taste Salud Festival Giveaway

Campaign Overview

Taste Salud is the brand behind Salud, a product its other campaigns asked fans to buy at Walmart and Circle K, and it is led by founder Josh Leyva, who runs his own YouTube channel as @thejoshleyva. Since 2024 it has run five giveaways on giveaway.tastesalud.com, and the largest by confirmed entrants was the Taste Salud Festival Giveaway.

The campaign ran from March 3 to March 31, 2025. 23,240 people signed up and 6,767 of them confirmed their email, from 343,188 page views. Entrants logged 33,518 bonus actions, made up entirely of SMS opt-ins and follows on the brand's and the founder's social channels.

Campaign Strategy

The prize was an experience rather than a product: an all-expenses-paid festival trip with two VIP festival tickets, two invites to Taste Salud's own Festival Fiesta, $1,000 in spending cash and a free one-year supply of Salud. Pairing the trip with a year of product meant the winner would keep the brand in their routine long after the festival was over.

The page kept the call to action short: "Enter now." Entry was an email sign-up, confirmation earned 10 points, and eight bonus actions built out the brand's owned channels:

• SMS: subscribe to SMS updates (150 pts), the highest-value task on the list.
• Brand social: follow @tastesalud on Instagram, TikTok and X, subscribe on YouTube, and like the Facebook page (100 pts each).
• Founder channels: subscribe to @thejoshleyva on YouTube (100 pts) and follow founder @thejoshleyva (50 pts).

Viral Mechanics & Growth Engine

The referral value was the standout decision. Each referred friend earned 1,000 points, while all eight bonus actions together were worth 800. One referral outscored the entire task list, so the fastest way to improve your odds was to bring someone else in. That weighting fits a prize that came with two festival tickets and two fiesta invites: every entrant had an obvious person to invite.

The SMS task was the most completed, with 6,282 opt-ins, close to the 6,767 confirmed entrants. Instagram (5,583) and TikTok (4,959) came next, then YouTube (3,332), X (3,255) and Facebook (3,252). In total the campaign logged 20,381 follows and subscriptions on Taste Salud's own channels and 6,855 on the founder's.

The founder tasks are worth a closer look. Following @thejoshleyva was worth only 50 points, the lowest value on the list, yet it drew 3,766 completions, more than YouTube, X or Facebook at twice the points. That suggests the founder's own following was part of what brought people to the page.

Results & Impact

• 23,240 sign-ups, of which 6,767 confirmed their email (29%).
• 343,188 page views in four weeks, about 15 for every sign-up.
• 33,518 completed bonus actions, led by 6,282 SMS opt-ins.
• 20,381 brand follows and subscriptions across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X and Facebook, plus 6,855 for the founder's channels.
• Across five campaigns on the domain, Taste Salud collected 139,643 sign-ups and 21,483 confirmed entrants.

The other campaigns reused the same task list with a different trip or ticket at the top: a Mexico trip for two (5,087 confirmed entrants, August 5 to September 1, 2024), a Circle K football giveaway for two tickets to any game (1,088, September 18 to October 3, 2024), a Walmart x Tulum trip for two (3,917) and a Mexico National Team ticket giveaway (4,624 confirmed from 75,334 sign-ups, April 20 to May 24, 2026). The two retail campaigns added a 1,000-point task to buy Salud in store and text in the receipt, completed 247 times for Walmart and 41 times for Circle K.

Why This Strategy Works

A founder-led consumer brand already has attention; the job of a giveaway is to turn that attention into channels the brand controls. The Festival Giveaway asked for exactly that, an SMS number and follows on five platforms, and priced each ask in points so that entrants did most of the work in a single visit. A trip with VIP access gave people a reason to finish the list rather than stop at the email form.

The oversized referral value then did the spreading, and the two-person prize gave every entrant someone to send it to. Running the same structure again for new trips, sports tickets and retail partners turned one campaign into a repeatable program. For any creator-founded food, drink or lifestyle brand building an audience it owns, this is the template worth copying.

Key Takeaways

1. Weight referrals above everything else. At 1,000 points, one referral was worth more than every task on the page combined.
2. Give away an experience plus a year of product. The trip creates the excitement and the supply of Salud keeps the brand around afterwards.
3. Put the founder in the task list. The lowest-value task, following @thejoshleyva, outperformed three brand channels worth twice as much.
4. Ask for SMS, not just email. The SMS opt-in was both the highest-value and the most-completed task.
5. Judge the list by confirmed entrants. Only 29% of sign-ups confirmed their email, so the SMS and social follows are a useful second line to the audience.
6. Reuse the template with retail partners. Later campaigns kept the same tasks and added a receipt task tied to Walmart or Circle K.