Friday, June 25, 2010

Reward Tweeters to Market Premium Food

If you have a substantial number of followers on Twitter, you’re off to a good start. However, the point of Twitter is not to amass followers, but to have them engage with your brand. The most successful premium food marketers using Twitter provide value to their customers.

 

One way to engage your followers is to reward those with “Klout.” An analytics service that tracks users’ influence based on several factors including the quality of followers and tweets, Klout places Twitter users into categories ranging from Observer to Celebrity based on their score.

 

 klout-logo1

 

Starbucks and Virgin America are two companies that are using Klout scores to help market their brand to tweeters that meet the criteria of “influencer.” In March, Starbucks offered free samples of Pike’s Place Roast coffee to influential Twitter users who often tweeted about coffee. More recently, Virgin offered free round-trip airfare between Toronto and San Francisco or Los Angeles to influencers and were invited to a launch event to celebrate Virgin’s new presence in Toronto.  

 

The most interesting thing about these promotions is that there are no strings attached. Influencers can choose to accept the free offer and are not obligated to do anything in return.

 

“If you accept the offer you are not required to do anything. We do not want to “buy” your tweets. You are receiving the product because you are influential and have authority on topics related to the product. This is a more targeted form of receiving a sample while shopping at the grocery store. You are welcome to tell the world you love the product, you hate the product or say nothing at all.

If you decide to talk about the product we will ask you to disclose that you received a sample. We will send you more information about this when we ship the product.” – Klout 

 

What kind of offer could your brand provide Twitter influencers with Klout? Do you think these promotions will help the companies gain more of a presence on Twitter or will the recipients simply take the free gift and not advocate the brand?

 

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Thursday, June 17, 2010

Premium Food Marketers Win Social Media Race

Premium food brands are leading the way in social media marketing. In the first media measurement of its kind, Famecount.com recently announced that Starbucks is the most popular consumer brand in the social media world.

 

Food brands took six of the top ten spots in the consumer brand category:

 

1. Starbucks

2. Coca-Cola

3. Skittles

4. Whole Foods Market

5. Oreo  

6. RedBull

7. Zappos.com

8. JetBlue Airways

9. Dell

10. Woot!

 

To determine the leading consumer brands using social media, Famecount analyzed information from the top social media sites – Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The only brand not using all three channels is Woot, which doesn’t have a YouTube presence.

 

In a press release, Daniel Dearlove, founder of Famecount.com, explained the importance of the study,

 

“This data is unique in that it gives us for the first time an accurate global ranking of the popularity of brands online. It is interesting to see established offline brands perform so strongly. This highlights the growing importance of social media in wider marketing campaigns, as well as the applicability of these channels to established brands, which may not have had a significant online presence previously. Social networks are helping them to tap into wider audiences and strengthen communications with existing consumers.”

 

While this information shows strong evidence that consumers are willing to claim loyalty to their favorite premium food brands, there is definitely a need for more statistical data about social media’s influence on brands. The Famecount study is a big step in the right direction and it will be interesting to see what evolves from this point on.

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Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Earth Day Promotions Grow for Premium Food Marketers

Any holiday is ripe for leverage by premium food marketers, including Earth Day. This year marks the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day and the tree hugging seems to be at an all-time high (hear Mother Nature’s sigh of relief?). 

Here are a few examples of premium food brands encouraging Earth Day participation:

• The Kroger Co. is inviting customers to “Design a Reusable Shopping Bag” through its annual online contest. Beginning April 12 and running through May 21, customers can go online at www.kroger.com/green to submit their designs for Kroger’s reusable grocery bags. The grand-prize winner will receive a $1,000 Kroger gift card and could see their bag design in stores.

• Kenwood Vineyards is commemorating this year’s Earth Day with an innovative bottle necker that will be featured on their “Sonoma Series” Cabernet, Chardonnay, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc and Zinfandel bottles, and are available in stores nationwide. Each necker includes a special “planet earth” insert of seed paper, which, when planted, will produce a mixture of wildflowers. 

• Pizza Fusion, a pioneer in the natural and organic restaurant movement, launched an online video contest through the month of April, searching for the country’s most creative and earth-friendly pizza recipe. The winner will receive a trip for two to an organic and sustainable vineyard, a year’s worth of organic beverages from Honest Tea and Give Natural Spring Water, an “Eco-Design” bike from Trek Bikes as well as have their winning recipe posted online at www.Pizzafusion.com. 

• Starbucks is offering free coffee to any customer that brings in their own reusable mug on Earth Day. The promotion is part of a larger effort on Starbucks’ part for all of its cups to be reusable or recyclable by 2015. 

How are you leveraging Earth Day? If you aren’t, what are some ways your company could market its premium food using Earth Day messaging?

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Thursday, January 7, 2010

A Recession Marketing Tip for Premium Beer Brands: Use Social Media

Know your customer is a common theme in this blog. And marketing to premium beer consumers is no exception. Social media is excellent for facilitating customer brand discovery and affinity. Brands that engage consumers in a meaningful way (and don’t act like a commodity) will be the true owners of their respective categories.

Advertising Age summarized the situation:

“As brewers look ahead to 2010, no challenge looms larger than to restore luster to their flagship premium brands, nearly all of which will end the year with negative sales trends. And that means finding ways to brand successfully in a new-media environment.”

So how can premium beer brands restore luster through social media?

 “While many blame a recession that has driven many consumers to look for cheaper brands, some beer marketers acknowledge that the brands have, for years, been marketed in a commoditized fashion. “People have seen the brands as very much the same,” said one veteran beer-marketing executive, “and that makes the cheaper stuff look like a reasonable replacement.”

Know your customers. Find the essence of what makes your brand resonate with them. Get back to communicating with them at that level. Clever premium food marketers will find a wealth of opportunities to re-connect with consumers through Social Media like never before.


“Solving that will require brewers to reclaim the sort of cultural relevance that, for example, fueled Bud Light’s astronomical rise. And, unfortunately for the big brewers, that relevance is more likely to be found online than on TV, a realm where the category has found few major successes to date, thanks in part to concerns about age-verification that have stymied some efforts and left marketers cautious in others.”


Find where beer-lovers congregate online. What affinity groups do they belong to? Who do they follow on Twitter? What games do they play? These ideas are just the tip of the Social Media iceberg.

new-glarus

Beer marketers can also check out the playbooks of other premium food and beverage brands that are retooling marketing strategies during the recession. For more ideas on Social Media, see my posts about Starbucks, Häagen-Dazs, and Maker’s Mark.

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Tuesday, December 8, 2009

When Marketing Premium Foods, Don’t Confuse Customers – Reward Them!

There are lessons to be learned from major retailer rewards programs. Don’t confuse customers, reward them with policies that are easy to understand and earn.

 

A perfect example of this is Starbucks’ new My Starbucks Rewards program. Starbucks tested their previous reward cards and found consumers had difficulty understanding the terms of their card programs, which ultimately led to dissatisfaction.

 

An e-mail statement sent from Starbucks to DMNews said:

 

“We tested our card approach over the last year and customers told us that we needed to make our card programs simpler to understand. We also gained insight that our members preferred a program without an annual membership fee and one that is more inclusive and accessible for everyone to join with benefits that appeal to a broad range of our customers.” http://bit.ly/5fPine

 

Instead of combating these claims, Starbucks listened and made changes for the better.

 

The previously confusing Starbucks Card Rewards and Starbucks Gold initiatives were combined into a hassle-free program that is easy to understand. Bottom line, loyal customers gain new permanent specials with repeat purchases.

 

starbucks

 

Specific card benefits include:

 

  • Once registered, customers qualify for a free drink on their birthday and free Wi-Fi.
  • After five uses, customers are on the “green level” which gives free refills on coffee and tee, free flavor syrups and soy, and a free tall drink with whole bean coffee purchase.
  • After 30 uses, members qualify for a personalized Gold Card representing their new earned status of a free drink every 15 purchases and exclusive offers and promotions

 

With the new benefits system more transparent, customers can continue to enjoy and appreciate Starbucks, rather than get discouraged and unsatisfied with rewards.

 

What do you think? Which rewards programs do you like, which ones are hassles? Please post your comments below.

 

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Friday, December 4, 2009

Is It Time to Use Mobile Marketing for Premium Food?

When do you predict your premium food business will include mobile media marketing? It might be sooner than you think.

 

The explosion in smartphone adaptation continues, along with faster networks and new features, means that mobile marketing campaigns will become a staple of advertising budgets.

 

Forrester Research recently reported the proportion of adult U.S. subscribers owning smartphones jumped to 17 percent last year from 11 percent  in 2008 and 7 percent in 2007 (http://bit.ly/5dZCle). Moreover, a new report published by Quantcast shows the mobile Web grew 110 percent in the U.S. and 148 percent worldwide in 2009. (http://bit.ly/Vhg9p)

 

There is no denying mobile phone advertising strategies in the United States are still in their infancy, but the current signs point to creative and engaging strategies to come. For example:

 

  1. Location based mobile ads send a text message to phones in a certain area—whether it’s near a Starbucks or local mom n’ pop restaurant—to offer special deals such as “50 cents off your next cup of coffee” or “free dessert with meal purchase” to attract customers.( http://bit.ly/7ubnLK)
  2. Mobile Coupons – Wendy’s and 7-eleven are running opt-in coupon campaigns, sending barcodes to smartphones offering free drinks and food discounts.(Wendys: http://bit.ly/8vzN2N , 7-eleven – http://bit.ly/8vzN2N)
  3. Real Time Billboard Interaction – Nike ID (http://bit.ly/IYA25) erected a large, interactive billboard in Times Square. Passers-by could use their cell phones to text in their own custom design. After one minute, their session would time out, and the users received an image of the actual shoe they just designed, which they could set as the wallpaper of their smartphone. They also received a special code and URL, so that they could purchase their new design. (http://bit.ly/4wttwP)

Growth in smartphone and mobile Web adaptation will generate a fertile creative frontier for marketers to pursue.

 

The results so far are mixed. According to B.R. Guest restaurants, location based mobile marketing efforts yielded a 5% response rate or better on most days during the campaign’s run. The challenge is that some Mobile coupons require special software to be installed and eat up bandwidth, which cause frustration and heightened data charges on phone plans.

 

http://bit.ly/nkrgc

The possibilities of advertising through smartphones are certainly exciting, especially for premium food. With opt in campaigns offering coupons and location-based advertisements, marketers can enhance campaigns to reach target audiences and build awareness.

 

If you are a premium food or beverage marketer, are you planning to use mobile marketing in 2010?

 

nike-times-square

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