I was so excited to see a Word of Mouth Marketing campaign that really resonates. Hershey's "Take 5" candy bar campaign started last year with a $17M TV blitz that brought in $28M worth of sales (sounds like pretty slender margins to me, especially once you give 50% to the retailers). Researchers discovered that people liked the candy, but not the DDB ads. Step One of a good WOMM campaign: A product people really like.
The Take 5 brand switched to a new agency, Arnold, that could offer traditional and "nontraditional" marketing techniques - read, marketing that leverages a many-to-many network instead of relying on broadcast communication. Hopefully Arnold is up to the task; they seem to have done great this time. Step Two of a good WOMM campaign: marketers eager to leverage the network effect.
Arnold brought in 69,000 BzzAgent evangelists to pass out free samples. Step Three of a good WOMM campaign: knowing when you need to call in the experts.
Hershey is also recruiting evangelists on its own Take 5 website, running ads on major websites to attract traffic, and passing out samples at movie theatres. They have a cool "crane game" on their website that is actually fun. It's smart of them not to rely on BzzAgent for their evangelists; but it also looks like they are sending their own evangelists to BzzAgent; I wonder who "owns" them and if they have established a dependency on their vendor. Step Four of a good WOMM campaign: leveraging all aspects of your network.
I was thrilled to see that Hershey is also inviting fans to create their own 60-second commercials, and their website visitors will choose the winner. This really creates a relationship with their customers, because it suggests that Hershey doesn't just view them as "consumers" with gaping mouths and bulging wallets, but as human beings with intelligence, creativity, and decisionmaking skills. Hopefully this is actually Hershey's attitude... but even if they are just faking it, it's a step in the right direction. Step Five of a good WOMM campaign: including an open-source marketing initiative.
Finally, the Take 5 website itself is responsible. In obeisance to COPPA law, it lets kids know when they are leaving for another website, when information is about to be collected, and when something is an ad, and it does this in a clear, no-nonsense way. Step Six of a good WOMM campaign: respecting your customer relationships.
Unfortunately, the Take 5 website only works if you have Flash, which is a way of insisting your viewers do things your way. This is a mistake; those without full web capability should not be turned away at the door. It violates step six. And how hard is it to create a non-flash version of your website? There's no excuse for this. Next Time: Universalize your website.
If done right, this broad initiative is likely to be cheaper and more effective than last year's ad blitz. Not-so-ironically, the only part of it that rings false to me is Arnold's TV ad campaign, "six 15-second spots humorously depicting how far consumers might go to get a Take 5 bar". I haven't seen the ads, but if they are integrated with the website game, it sounds like a copy of "Harold and Kumar go to White Castle".
Considering that the rest of the campaign is giving them away for free, for awhile they might be all over the place. You might go to a friend's house and see 15 of them on the table, and the friend might invite you to "take as many as you want, they were free". You're not exactly putting yourself out to acquire the candy bar when someone at the movie theatre presses it into your hand. I highly approve of the sampling, but it should be paired with a campaign that, at minimum, makes sense taken in conjuction with a sampling initiative. Next Time: integrate your broadcast campaign with your network campaign.
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