Social Media, Communication Management, Excellence Winner
Embracing the Loaf Love
Allison McCormick
Conkling Fiskum & McCormick for Tillamook® Cheese
Portland, Oregon, U.S.
Contents:
Need/Opportunity
In early 2008, the nearly 100-year-old Tillamook County Creamery Association freed a small budget to fund one of its agency’s “big ideas.” Tillamook enjoys strong brand equity and sales in its core markets in the northwest U.S., but wanted to expand distribution and brand recognition in growth markets. CFM believed that the best way to grow was through positive word-of-mouth from existing customers. A social networking strategy was developed to accelerate existing online conversations among those who had an affinity for the brand, and to take the company into its second century.
In a Web 2.0 world, brands are in the hands of their consumers. People would rather hear from each other than from companies. Fortunately for Tillamook, there have been Tillamook® Cheese fans as long as there has been Tillamook cheese. These fans had begun sharing their affection for the brand on the Web, but not yet in a central location. New social networking technologies now allow those who share a common passion to come together. By early 2008, 400 Facebook members had joined fan-started Tillamook Cheese groups.
In an effort to supercharge the brand’s enthusiasts, CFM set out to create a controlled space for Tillamook’s fans to connect in a community they felt was their own.
While consumers trust other consumers most, they also want the companies they are talking to or about to listen to them. CFM wanted to engage Tillamook’s best customers to deepen the connection they had with the brand in order to encourage advocacy.
Creating an official Tillamook fan community and engaging its best customers one-on-one would:
- Provide access to inexpensive research. Direct contact with customers would provide answers to questions Tillamook never thought to ask. By listening to its best customers, the company could profit from their insights. Through open and honest feedback from those who feel a personal connection to the brand, Tillamook could learn how best to invest its money—testing ads, generating new ideas for packaging design and new products, and identifying how best to connect with consumers.
- Offer constant engagement with consumers. Whether coming into contact with a consumer at Tillamook-sponsored event or at the supermarket, Tillamook could increase the brand’s reach to customers on a consistent basis in a more cost-effective way than traditional advertising.
- Allow for better targeting of event and new product promotions by being able to invite fans in each market to nearby events and let them know when new products hit the shelves in local stores.
- Build a group of Tillamook loyalists whose brand advocacy could promote Tillamook products with high credibility and modest cost to everyone they know.
- Gain inspiration and insight for unique media pitches from the stories the company would hear from fans.
- Complement and promote e-commerce to push increased sales by highlighting products and linking to the online store.
- Measure the success of online investments in real time.
The CFM team understood that, in order to be successful, they would need to find out all they could about Tillamook’s best customers, what would convince them to become official fans and how to reach those who weren’t yet familiar with the brand. The team relied on a solid research platform to shape their strategy.
Brand research commissioned by Tillamook showed:
- Key drivers for purchase decisions of Tillamook cheese were based on quality. This was a key strength to leverage.
- Price was also a top driver, but as a premium cheese Tillamook was often chosen because it was something special consumers thought they or their families deserved.
- Recognition of Tillamook gets weaker further away from the northwest U.S.
- The less aware consumers are about the brand, the more they choose based on price. CFM needed to increase awareness of the brand and product quality to grow in targeted markets.
- Loyal customers reported they chose Tillamook because:
- The cheese tastes great.
- It’s made with quality craftsmanship.
- The company has been making cheese for almost 100 years.
- It’s a good value for the money.
- Being a natural product that uses high-quality milk was also important and would be more so to new customers.
- Hearing about the product as “being something special” would also encourage growth in target markets.
Informal research included reviewing existing online groups formed out of the love for Tillamook and existing blog posts about the product and the brand. The team also used events to gauge consumer interest in an official fan club.
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Intended Audiences
- Primary: self-declared fans of the brand and women ages 25–54 who cook and are the primary food purchasers in the home
- Secondary: cheese lovers in growth markets outside the northwest U.S. who hadn’t tried Tillamook
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Goals and Objectives
The overall goal was to build a community around the Tillamook brand that would allow its most loyal customers to know it better, expand their relationship with the company, provide open and honest feedback, and credibly spread the word about the brand to energize sales.
A fan club has the advantage of being measurable on several levels. Because it is a database of self-selected Tillamook brand fans, its size, rate of growth, and responsiveness to online interactions can be benchmarked and measured over time. The impact of increasing the fan base, which includes active bloggers, is easily monitored.
Objectives included the following:
- Building an official club with 500 members or more by January 2009
- Growing attendance at Tillamook events
- Using the fan base to launch an online store and gross US$25,000 or more in its first month
- Convincing self-professed fans to share their information and stories of love for Tillamook
- Increasing positive blog mentions about Tillamook
- Receiving timely feedback from customers about products and issues of concern
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Solution Overview
Because Tillamook is a century old, farmer-owned co-op, the team decided to take small, careful steps in developing the social networking strategy as a platform for the company’s public relations. Phase one would enter Tillamook into the social universe piece by piece, and the first phase of the web site would be launched. Phase two was planned for early 2009 to give the team time to learn from the fans and explore new technologies.
CFM immediately began drafting a look for the Fan Club and a layout for the web site, meeting weekly with the client to ensure they felt ownership of the project. Each new draft and revision was shared with the client, and a clear time line with detailed steps was drawn up to bring them along comfortably.
In developing the site, CFM needed to provide fans with more of what they wanted from Tillamook, make them feel part of a community, give them reasons to keep coming back and encourage their friends to join. Research shaped the strategy by pinpointing which tactics and targeted messages were most effective.
Key Messages:
- We appreciate your declarations of love for Tillamook. We love you, too, and want to build a place for you to come together as VIPs to truly be a part of Tillamook.
- Tillamook is a company steeped in tradition. While we won’t change our 100-year-old cheese making process, we can still gain inspiration from those who know us best.
- Just like we take pride in our craftsmanship for producing consistent, best-tasting cheeses and dairy products, we want to craft what you want most online. Share your ideas to make the Fan Club your own.
Execution
Those customers who are most ardent in their love for Tillamook cheese—the best customers—are already in a conversation about Tillamook. The company wanted to encourage them to continue their conversations, but also join as “official fans.”
Facebook. CFM entered the conversation using Facebook with the primary purpose of promoting the developing Fan Club to self-declared fans. The team also wanted to launch the site with a base of members. The Facebook Fan Page took on a life of its own, and still seems to grow at the speed of light. A Facebook page means exposure to more than just fans of the page because as each fan declares herself, all of her Facebook friends get the notification. As a result, the rate of growth speeds up daily. Not only was the number of fans growing, but wall posts and fan-submitted content were added more frequently as fans were encouraged by other fans. The Facebook page ended up being a perfect test bed as the team built the Fan Club web site. Most of all, it flattered the client so much to see the quickly evolving page develop into a love page dedicated to Tillamook and set them at ease that a Fan Club was the right investment.
Blogger relations. One in four people who are online in the U.S. read blogs, and when bloggers comment about you, they want you to pay attention. Seventy-six percent of customers use online reviews to make purchase decisions, and 80 percent of online reviews tend to be positive. That meant CFM needed a blogger strategy. To encourage bloggers to continue or begin writing positive posts, the team planned to highlight and link to favorite posts on the web site, but they also saw these bloggers as potential Fan Club members who could influence others to join. The strategy was to thank bloggers for their posts and let them know Tillamook was building a site they wanted to include them on.
Twitter. In monitoring online conversations, the team saw Tweets declaring love for Tillamook products. When they began the Facebook page, they entered the Twitter world to grow a base of followers to invite to the site. They also used Twitter to promote all of Tillamook’s news and events while the Fan Club site was being built. The entry into Twitter was so successful that a Twitter feed was posted prominently on the official web site. Because of the Twitter and Facebook success, the team also found fans on and joined in Flickr and YouTube.
Fan Club web site. CFM created www.tillamookfanclub.com. The first phase of the site highlighted “fans of the month,” who had won a year’s supply of cheese and other prizes for outstanding declarations of love for the brand. The site highlighted Tillamook personalities to show tradition and the real people within the company. It featured popular recipes because research showed interest in cooking was an influential component for the target audience. The site also included a highlighted product of the month that connected to the new online store and pushed sales. It shared news about the company and events the fans could participate in, building excitement around the upcoming 100th anniversary of Tillamook. The site provided helpful tips and most important, a place for fans to share their love for Tillamook as well as a “share with a friend” tool. A “Post of the Day” was prominently displayed to ensure frequent updating of the site, giving fans something fresh to look at while encouraging bloggers to post content about Tillamook and be highlighted on the site.
Phase two of the site is currently being built and will include more social networking functionality that will allow fans to engage directly with one another. They will be able to view fan growth on an interactive map, share and rate each other’s recipes, find restaurants and popular menu items in their area that use Tillamook cheese, and answer a “Question of the Month,” which will allow Tillamook to conduct research with its fans online.
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Implementation and Challenges
Budget. CFM’s budget was US$100,000, including outside costs, for the first phase of the project.
Time frame. After getting client approval to move forward in late May of 2008, the team set about building the site to launch in November 2008, coinciding with the planned launch of the online store.
Challenges. Were the customers ready for it? Yes. They were already talking and connecting online. CFM’s challenge was convincing a traditional company to launch into a new century by expanding the way it related to its customers. In order to make the farmer-owned co-op comfortable with using an online community as the platform for its public relations strategy, the team sold the benefits: access to basically free research, better marketing of events, geo-targeting of products and measurable outcomes. They also told Tillamook that establishing a place for their customers to gather to talk about their products, and the ideas inspired by this conversation, would provide benefits that allowed them insight in how to best invest their money.
Budget was also a challenge. With only US$30,000 in hard costs available to develop the site, the team needed to start slowly and show the client the benefits before investing more. It worked. The CEO was so thrilled with what he saw, he doubled the budget for phase two.
The final challenge was to convince fans to join. The team didn’t want them to join solely for the possibility of winning prizes so they set about building a site that included what fans wanted to view and excited them enough not only to send their stories but also to encourage their friends to join. The team wanted the fans to truly feel engaged; therefore, a full-time in-house online community manager was assigned to monitor and respond to the online community daily.
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Measurement/Evaluation
In its first month, the site grew to more than 550 fans. By 2 February, 788 fans had signed up. The Fan Club newsletter’s click-through rates were extraordinary, with a click-through rate of 76 percent in the first month (a 30 percent rate is considered successful).
- Fans continue to enter their stories of love for the brand, so much so that CFM is considering creating a “Fan of the Week” opportunity.
- Facebook fan page member numbers continue to grow by leaps and bounds. The amount of growth in the last two weeks is more than in the first two months of the launch, with nearly 5,000 fans by 2 February.
- By highlighting the annual Macaroni & Cheese Cook-off on the Facebook page and inviting fans for the first time, 350 seats were filled in the first week after the invitation was posted.
- When Tillamook was developing a brand plan and needed to turn around quick consumer research in 24 hours, CFM went to the Facebook fans and received more than 20 responses that helped the client learn how their best consumers described their cheese to those who hadn’t tried it.
- After the online store finally launched in mid-December, first-month sales were more than US$37,000 through Fan Club promotions alone.
- Blog mentions have grown since the launch of the web site. Bloggers frequently repost about their blog being highlighted on the web site and rave about Tillamook increasing hits to their blogs.
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