What’s in a name? Kraft listens carefully…

We were very fortunate to have a chat with Simon Talbot, Corporate Affairs Manager of Kraft, during a very busy time! He has a terrific story …for them social media is about the listening, and understanding buyer personas.

Simon, Kraft Aust/NZ has been one of the early adopters of social media in its marketing campaigns, tell us about that journey?

We acknowledged that we were considered by many to be a very conservative and traditional Brand/Corporation – and that we weren’t as close to our consumers as we would like to be.  About two years ago, we uncovered the following facts:

1. The internet has twice the influence of Television & ten times that of printed media, yet it only represents 7-8% of company advertising budgets globally (source: Zenith Optimedia for Ad spend, 2007).
2. Increasingly consumers prefer to get their news from online sources as opposed to printed media. In the UK Printed news now accounts for only 5% of media influence. This is influenced through the timeliness & search capabilities of online news sources, compared with their printed cousins.
3. The Internet is by far the most important medium in the lives of consumers…but companies are under investing in that influence.
4. Over 80% of online consumers use the internet to conduct comparison shopping for major purchases.
5. Around 30% of online consumers post a comment to an online newsgroup or a website during a typical week.
6. In the U.K., 28% of online consumers do not read printed magazines in an average week, and 26% do not read a printed newspaper.
7. In the U.K., during 2007 the internet accounted for 15% of all advertising spend, up from 11% in 2006, however the U.K. is considered to be leading in this area with France & Germany at 9.5% & 9% respectively.
8. Price-comparison sites are by far the most common research targets, consulted by 85% of consumers.
9. Blogs have a 31% and growing adoption rate as a research source.
10. 20% of all consumers have created a profile on a social networking site. While 10% of all consumers write blogs.
11. There are 112 Millions Blogs on the internet and this figure is doubling every year
12. We are seeing 120,000 new postings to blogs everyday
13. Over the last 2 years we have seen over 1.5 Billion posts to Message Boards, Forums and Groups (Like Facebook Groups)
14. Facebook has over 80 million “active users” which means that they “returned to the site in the last 30 days.”
15. Facebook and MySpace attracted over 300 million visitors last month[1].

When it comes to getting close to consumers we knew we had both the mechanism and mandate to re-engage with consumers. If you look at the more recent studies and reports, it only becomes more critical to do so.

So you engaged in a social media campaign, what exactly did you do?

For many of our strong brands such as Vegemite – we acknowledged that we are simply (proud) brand custodians and that the brand is owned by “the people”. We focussed our first two years of social media on simply listening and asking questions.

Two of these questions were:

1. How do you individually like your Vegemite?
2. If there ever was to be a Vegemite variation what would this be?

In his book ‘The New Rules of Marketing and PR’ , David Meerman Scott talks about the importance of understanding your buyer personas. How did these questions influence your understanding of your buyer personas?

Very much. In total over 300’000 Australians participated in online forums, surveys, chat sessions and Q/A briefs. The answers to these questions generated the Great Vegemite Census with the identification of the Streaker, Slapper, and Nudist, or really nine other common ways of eating Vegemite.

It must have been an incredible thrill to find out that Vegemite was the most loved brand online! Tell us about that finding and how that has impacted your social media marketing efforts.

In two words “very humbling” but again it is the people’s brand – they love it and love what it stands for; it reinforced our marketing and comms campaigns to give the brand across to the people and encourage them to share different eating ideas and taste trials. In all 12 common ways of eating Vegemite were identified; some quite well know such as melting cheese, others with Avocadoes and Tomato were less known; and even some apparently bizarre uses such as in Pork Crackling were common folklore in many sections of the population.

We handed these top ideas back to the people and launched our largest Integrated Marketing/Comms campaign ever. These result were staggering, with record sales for Vegemite (23 million Jars). Year on Year we grew sales by 8% (which is very significant for a mature established brand that exists in 70% of Australian Households).

Two of the biggest challenges for marketing products with social media are getting to grips with the ‘authenticity’ aspect, and the need to ‘listen’, rather than push. How have you addressed this in your campaigns?

Again the common link that I instil across our Kraft team is listen, ethically and openly steer (if required), but don’t judge, force or sell.

We have also invested in Ambassador Program to launch and test new products – again being open and placing the brand “and its future” in the rightful hands of consumers.

A big issue for many marketers is the question of metrics. How do you measure success with your social media marketing efforts?

We conduct a variety of measurements, both internal and external. These cover simply scores from click throughs, downloads, surveys’, through to web voice in food industry, sentiment tracking across core brands, sentiment improvement across campaign and of course realised sales as a result of positive engagement.

And most recently you have launched your latest product the “Name me” vegemite plus cream cheese experience. How are you using social media and online marketing with this?

Well this is a real work in progress; we spent two weeks listening, and now with product on shelves the Kraft Communications team is engaging with Vegemite loyalists and cynics alike across the 12 top social media “medium”. We are engaging and getting samples out on and off line  – and encouraging debate on the new products  – you can already observe a number of Facebook groups sitting in the following camps: pro original, pro new flavour and anti new flavour.

We have created the Vegemite home page to allow increased  engagement; inclusive of naming the new vegemite.

You won’t see us over branding vegemite on line – this is not our style or in the best interest on consumers of corporations – but you will see us engaging; and a good friend of mine guided how we do this (with his 7 rules for Corporate Social media interaction)

1. Be as transparent as possible at all times (people will know if you aren’t)
2. Be human, i.e. don’t be afraid to show ‘the person behind the corporation’
3. Admit you’ve made mistakes in the past and are learning by listening to consumers).
4. Tackle negative sentiment promptly/directly. Remember its real-time discussion and the reach can be exponential.
5. Support advocates messages and engage people who love your brand.
6. Remember at all times that the world is watching, so speak with confidence/authority.
7. Remember your role is to facilitate the discussion, not necessarily lead it. Be open to what people say and respond in-kind.

Kraft has a new philosophy of being an equal participant in the Social Media collective and enjoying the journey.

Simon, thank you so much for your time. We’re sure the new product is going to be a World Wide Rave!