I was doing some research about developing a Social Media Strategy and came across a case study of Ketchup. I find it useful to look outside professional services and particularly like products like Ketchup. This is because, on the face of it, Ketchup appears to be a commodity which is where many professional service firms are stuck.
The role of the marketeer is to differentiate the firm and many people go about this by exploring USPs and USBs (unique Selling Propositions or Unique Selling Benefits). However, marketing has moved on because everyone has USPs and USBs, who cares? And to be blunt if you think about accountants, most firm’s features and benefits are the same so what you really need to do is search for is your passion. Once you discover this you can focus on it and communicate it through your marketing, including your use of Social Media.
When it comes to passion, BMW has Joy, Volvo have safety, Apple has design, Disney has magic and Portfolio has freedom. Anyway, back to Ketchup and in particular Heinze who ran a campaign called Talk to the Plant. This is where they took two tomato plants and did an experiment.
One plant was put in a room next to a speaker and linked to a computer. You could visit a Website, type a message which would be spoke to the pant. The other plant was in a room with no sound.
The experiment was to see if talking to plants improved the tomato and monitored by a professor. Running the campaign allowed 65,000 Ketchup fans to participate and I am sure many others heard about it through word of mouth, like you are now.
The campaign used Social Media including a separate Blog but crucially it was driven by the wider strategy - Heize's tagline is “Grown not made”. You see, Ketchup are not just focussing just on the 57 varieties or the fact they started in 1869 - the key message is the journey from seed to plant.
This is a great example of how marketing can be done with joined up thinking. This is not expensive, but it does require creativity which is priceless.