I recently ran across an interesting article in Business 2.0 highlighting the work of South African winery Stormhoek who distinguished their product in a crowded market by using blogging, crowd surfing and viral marketing. I thought it would be good to compare Stormhoek (new-age) with the PR that your company (stone age) is probably doing.
In short, Stormhoek, hired Hugh MacLeod to promote their products through his site, GapingVoid.com. Stromhoek believed that MacLeod’s following of tech geeks would be the perfect match as they shared the same single-minded passions as wine enthusiasts do. MacLeod offered a free bottle of the wine to any blogger who asked so long as they were of legal drinking age and had been blogging for a minimum of 3 months. Bloggers were asked to write a post on the Stromhoek wine experience without any obligations. The post didn’t have to mention the name of the company or even reflect a positive review.
At the end of the 6 month experiment, nearly 100 bloggers posted related items or comments. MacLeod capitalized by using his online celebrity to organize “geek dinners” for the bloggers in Britain, Spain, France and in the United States. Stromhoek’s sales have jumped nearly six-fold over that time. They expect to push about a million cases annually within three years, up from their 50,000 cases a year worldwide now. The total cost of the campaign over the 2 years came out to about $40,000 which is remarkably cheap considering the amount of publicity and sales conversions the promotion added. To top off the success, Ad Age named the Stromhoek strategy one of the top 50 marketing campaigns in 2006. Not bad for a bunch of bloggers.
How does the promotion and strategy that Stromhoek pulled off differ from your company’s plans?
Stromhoek – Gave their small niche audience something to talk about. On a volunteer basis, their customers chose to read their advertisements and PR. They had the permission of each person they came in contact with to market their product to them.
Your Company – Force your story and splatter your advertisements across as many mediums and over as many people as you can afford. Yes, some of the crowd may already know about your product and yes, you may gain a few new supporters in the process, but the probability and conversion rate is very low. You don’t engage your customer or find out who they really are which in turn costs you more money down the line as well.
Stromhoek – Created a true grass-roots / word-of-mouth customer program. They were transparent and clear with their intentions. They asked permission from their customers. They didn’t interfere or do the song and dance to get attention.
Your Company – Fakes a grass-roots campaign. You have a lackadaisical MySpace or FaceBook page (so does everyone else), but your customers can see right through your futile attempts.
Stromhoek – Built a marketing strategy on-line and off. They correlated and had a similar function and feel to them.
Your Company – Lucky if you can get the group that develops the online collateral and marketing plan in the same room with the group that is responsible for the print pieces.
Stromhoek – Let their customers be their guinea pigs. They tested outside of the lab and gave free samples. They took their customers advice and made changes as necessary.
Your Company – Test, test, test in the lab, but still end up being surprised when your product fails in the market. You know what your research tells you. Customers don’t know what they want.
Additional Resources:
Mixed Media courtesy of mgwinc
Seth Godin – Permission Marketing
Made to Stick – Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
