Client: Elmer’s Products?
Agency: BzzAgent
Objective: Harness word of mouth among parents to launch products through influential bloggers.?
Elmer’s Products wanted to target moms ages 25 to 55 interested in crafts and scrapbooking for the launch of an Elmer’s and X-Acto line of crafting supplies, sold exclusively at Wal-Mart stores.? The campaign needed to highlight how these products — such as glue, specially designed scissors and hole punchers made for scrapbooking — are different than the standard tools. ?
The launch could have been advertised through more traditional means, such as in-store “end-caps” or free-standing inserts, but the way to understand what makes the products different is to use them, explains Malcolm Faulds, SVP of marketing at BzzAgent, a social media agency. ?
“All these crafters talk to each other, so you want to get this exposure and engagement in this cohort of people,” he says. “They needed to show that the products work and how they work.” ?
STRATEGY: BzzAgent segmented its panel of 800,000 bloggers and active online contributors to seek out parents within the target demographic who are interested in crafting and scrapbooking. It generated a panel of 10,000 parents, including some 250 bloggers. ?BzzAgent gave the targets free products, specialized collateral about what made the products different, pass-along coupons and other offers to share with their online followers, as well as a program of weekly crafting projects.
During the course of the eight-week program, the influencers were asked to write product reviews for Amazon.com and other websites, as well as share the coupons with others online. In addition, they were asked to upload pictures of their friends and families using the products, and shots of their completed weekly craft projects to their social media feeds and websites. ?
“They’re conversation-starters,” says Faulds. “We designed them to build exposure for the brand and generate user content for ?the brand.” ?
RESULTS: The Nielsen Co. is analyzing the complete results of the eight-week program, which ran in fall 2010, says Faulds. To date, the program has reached 1.5 million consumers, with each participant reaching an average of 159 other people, both online and offline, through their networks of friends, he adds. ?
It resulted in 3,380 Facebook posts, 830 blog posts and 690 tweets about the product. More importantly, the promotion increased purchase intent for Elmer’s by 38 percentage points over the numbers seen before the campaign broke, says Faulds.
