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AllRecipes.com Sells WOM to Moms

Here's another post from WOMMA by Jennifer Nastu, a partner at Fast Trike and one of the offical bloggers at the Word of Mouth Marketing Associations conference in San Fran this week.

Challenge:
When Sara Lee wanted to launch a new bread, Soft & Smooth Whole Grain Wheat Bread, in order to appeal to the growing group of people who wanted to feed their children healthier foods and more whole grains, the company turned to AllRecipes.com for a partnership.

"Moms have no control when kids are out of their sight, except for sack lunches," says Esmee Williams, VP of Marketing for AllRecipes.com. That food, she acknowledges, may be eaten, or it may end up in trashcans. Nonetheless, Sara Lee wanted to influence sack lunches.

Campaign:
So the team began an "online taste test panel" just before a new school year began.

An invitation was advertised in areas of the site "where we tend to find influencers," Esmee explains. (To the team implementing the campaign, an influencer was someone on the site who tends to submit content and offer opinions.) They were asked to fill out a survey. Those who fit the target profile (moms with school age children) were given coupons for 70% off a loaf of the bread. Others were given a coupon for 40% off.

Those who agreed to be on the "taste test" panel were given a microsite where they could talk about the product, tell what they thought about it, submit recipes using the product, or tell a friend. They were also asked to come back and participate in a survey.

The campaign also included:
-ads on the AllRecipe.com website
-TV ads
-FSI coupons
-store displays

Results:
"We looked at the community section of our site and really thought through how many influencers we thought we could get and we thought we could get 5,000 people to sign up," says Julie Dey, Director of Advertising Services for AllRecipes.com.

In fact, they got well over 15,000 people to participate, most in their target market.

Seventy percent of the audience downloaded the coupon, and 40 percent redeemed it. "We project that we reached over 100,000 people just through WOM alone, and on average each participant told 6.6 others about the program," Julie explains.

Ultimately, the popularity of the bread was so great that Sara Lee extended the product into an entire line.

Email Comes of Age, Officially

If you're a parent, you're probably familiar with the Nick Jr. show Blue's Clues. One of the main songs in the show happens at mail time when the host goes to the mailbox and gets a letter from a child. Having two young children who've watched the show for years, I know it by heart: "We just got a letter, we just got a letter, we just got a letter, I wonder who it's from!"

I haven't seen the show in a while, but today I walked in the room where they were watching and noticed that the words have changed: "We just got an email, we just got an email, we just got an email, I wonder who it's from!"

The show targets young kids, maybe three or four years old. Why the switch? I'm sure helping kids understand technology had something to do with it, but it also creates a pretty cool advertising tie-in for Nick Jr. When you visit the main page for Blue's Clues, there's a nifty little place to send an email card, just like in the show, to a friend. When you receive the email card, it has an advertisement : For great Games and Activities go to NickJr.