3:50 — Bergen Anderson introduces Kraft‘s Dana Vogel.
3:51 — “I know it’s late in the day, so everybody could use a cup of
coffee. That’s my joke!”
3:52 — A little about Gevalia, we’re direct to consumer. We’re not sold on the shelf, only through direct mail or print ads. As a subscription based direct marketing, we saw that customers were not staying as long as we’d like them to. We found the conversations about Gevalia were about SPAM—about Gevalia emailing too much,
appearing uninvited in their inbox.
3:54 — We’re also known as free coffeemaker company. Once they became customers they loved the product. But the service and the way people interacted was creating problems for business.
3:55 — We were also experiencing an aging customer base. What was needed was a transformation. We redid the website, rejiggered outreach, and more.
3:56 — In 2009 we hired Kinetic Fin, an agency that helped us use video to tell story of Gevalia. We didn’t have a big budget, but wanted to do more.
3:57 — We wanted to know how loyal our customers were, and wanted to know the love.
3:58 — We started to listen. We looked at the category we were in, and the words people used to describe us. What are two word uses to describe coffee? With and you. It’s not beans or Starbucks. An insight: coffee is
the centerpiece of people’s lives.
4:00 — We put up Facebook and Twitter profiles. Set up Beanchat and got an influential blogger to conduct the chat.
4:01 — We held a home tasting party in 12/09. Started asking customers about the brand and what they wanted from the company and the products.
4:02 — We solicited our own base to become fans of Gevalia on Facebook.
4:03 — Then we came up with a big idea: Name A Coffee. Gevalia had a dark roast but wanted a robust one. So they had to tell the story about the product to people who were spending lots of money on the product. So we brought in a taster, 10vbloggers/influencers, taught cupping process, and chose a new roast.
4:04 — We sponsored a competition on Facebook where fans submitted a name for the coffee in
exchange for chance to win a home tasting party. The name with the most votes got the prize.
4:05 — The landing page included an embedded video, with core metrics tab to keep track of sales.
4:06 — Shows a video of all the videos submitted.
4:07 — Social media has helped Gevalia listen to customers in way it never had before. This is a brand not in stores, not in shops, so it had been hard to listen to what customers wanted or what they thought about the brand. If you make social media engaging, people will come back.
4:08 — The submitted videos were played on YouTube for other fans and customers. Gevalia received 10 million contest impressions, 4,000 names for new coffee entered, 70,000 votes cast, and were the 3rd most popular contest on Facebook in the first half of 2010. There was a 77% increase in fan activity through the contest.
4:09 — And this was all on zero budget.
4:10 — Gevalia then worked on the game/sweepstakes for 1853 Heritage blend. They had
tremendous blogger outreach. More than 50MM impressions.
4:11 — We formed the Coffee Squad because every 5 seconds someone posted that they were out of coffee. The coffee Squad responded to people who had these posts and offered to send free coffee. This brough a really great, positive response.
4:12 — We changed the conversation from a focus on marketing to a focus on community, flavors and people. Gevalia has highest “voice” among Kraft Beverage brands.
4:13 — We experienced a 2 -3 % growth in Twitter and Facebook.
4:14 — This campaign was completely homegrown.
Q & A
Q: Sara Joy from Charming Shoppes, “You said you found woman who posted about needing
coffee. How did you find her?”
A: Kinetic Fin found her via proprietary software. She had posted on Facebook.
Q: Chris Nolan, “What was measurable dollar value?”
A: A 50% increase in default traffic value but there’s no way to figure out default sales value. There was a big increase in traffic and sales though.
Q: Jesse, CEO of Co Tweet, “Do you plan to do any Facebook display advertising, combining planned media with social media?”
A: Yes, we will be using Facebook ad display and will be testing other kinds of display advertising. Yes, it will be managed within my group.
Q: Heather Thomas from Full Circle, “Did you change anything in advertising channels during your social media campaign?”
A: We allocated more money online than we traditionally do. We saw spam complaints showing up on pages 2-3 of Google, so putting the money towards online was important.
Q: BL Ochman, “You said zero promotional budget, but how much did you spend?”
A: We had no print media and didn’t add the creative scope of our social media program. We did hire Kinetic Fin but there were no traditional media buys. We were able to mine from DTC database.
Love this live coverage? It’s all thanks to the amazing Tish Grier.
