360DigitalInfluence

At WOMMA  2008, I attended two leading brand breakout sessions- Hershey’s and McDonald’s.   Each presented a case study on how they successfully used word of mouth marketing to launch a new offering to their customers. Hershey’s launched their Bliss chocolate line in three flavors with 10,000 in-home viral marketing parties with partner House Party.   While, McDonald’s launched it’s first-ever chicken-for-breakfast menu item, the Southern-style chicken biscuit, with a user generated dance web site and an online and offline cohesive word of mouth effort.

Both of these cases are worth mentioning, especially to those who work in public relations and marketing, because they demonstrated how social media is vital to spark buzz, engage influencers and generate brand awareness among key audiences. It’s also important to note that these programs were spearheaded by the same people who run the traditional public relations efforts and the results were deemed a success and in some cases even more successful than the usual print, television and radio impressions.

The following is a glimpse of how Hershey’s and McDonald’s hit a home run with their new chocolate and chicken offerings in 2008:

The Hershey’s Bliss House Party Event

First, up is Hershey’s Bliss Chocolate.     Hershey’s partnered with House Party, in order to create their nationwide event where consumers could host thousands of parties on one day, in homes nationwide, with an exclusive Hershey’s Bliss brand experience at the center of the action. Jody Cook, the Director of Product Publicity from Hershey and Kitty Kolding CEO of House Party explained the inspiration behind the project.

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Hershey’s launched three flavors of Bliss:   dark chocolate, milk chocolate and milk chocolate with meltaway center. Their target consumers were women who they encouraged to celebrate their everyday ordinary blissful life moments. For example, picking up your kids from soccer practice, getting together with friends.

House Party used their structured party process to get thousands of consumers nationwide to host gatherings in their home and invite approximately 15 guests to attend. The parties were designed to be naturally occurring experiences with Bliss chocolate at the center of the fun. Additionally, House Party created a custom branded micro site which served as the core of the program. The micro site lasted for six weeks- pre, during and post launch event and it was Hershey’s means of interacting with the party community as well as obtaining party metrics throughout the event timeframe.

In addition to the Bliss parties and web site, House Party developed a unique party pack for every party. It’s basically a “box of stuff”, that consists of literature, DVD’s, samples, apparel, party supplies, branded supplies. Hershey’s Bliss provided consumers with samples of Bliss chocolate, as well as branded grocery lists pads, pens, magnets and cocktail napkins. They also provided each party host with a special scrapbook in order to keep their blissful memories with them.

Taken as a whole, the parties, kits and web site provided a powerful tangible connection for the Bliss brand to give the community. As House Party activated the consumer, gathered them together and helped to create their own moments of bliss, Hershey’s Bliss was building personal relationships with the consumer and generating strong word-of-mouth that’s measurable. Here’s a snapshot of Hershey’s Bliss metrics:

Bliss Launch Event: April 25-27, 2008

• 10,000 house parties
• 150,000 guests
• 24,500 photos & videos
• 15,000+ blog posts

Results to date:

• PR Impressions 115 million+
• Party Attendance 150,000: created a national footprint
• Host WOM pass-alongs 4.6 million
• Guest WOM pass- alongs 2.6 million
• More than 450,000 person-hours of hands on brand time on a single weekend
• Through House Party initiative 125,300,000 impressions were generated

What Came First? How McDonald’s Got American Buzzing About Chicken

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Similar to Hershey’s, McDonald’s activated word-of-mouth through a new menu offering- the Southern-style chicken biscuit. Heather Oldani, Director: U.S. Communications of McDonald’s and Rick Wion, Account Group Supervisor of Golin Harris explained how McDonald’s got consumers to think beyond the signature Egg McMuffin and warm up to chicken for breakfast.

McDonald’s started the conversation with their customers by using the inherent uniqueness of eating chicken for breakfast. They believed in leveraging the universal appeal of the chicken versus the egg debate- “What came first the chicken or egg?”

However they couldn’t rely on this alone, therefore created a user-generated dance web site, buzz generating Man on the Street interviews, Street Teams dancing in New York as well as online and offline tactics to create a cohesive word of mouth effort.

How McDonalds did it:

• National Sample Day- (May 15, 2008) Free Southern-style chicken biscuits for breakfast
• Whatcamefirst.com- A dance off web site where people can upload their personal photos and have their character (a chicken or egg) compete with customized dance moves and music  
• Exclusive CNBC story on Squawk Box to launch the web site and product on April 28, 2008
• National media relations
• National Dance like a Chicken Day (updated Wikipedia, used Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, celebrations outside national morning shows, Today & Good Morning America
• Local market PR support- handed out Arch Cards and promoted web site
• Internal Communications- Worked with their crew members by having NBA All-star Dwight Howards record a video for StationM. Crew members were invited to submit videos of themselves dancing like a chicken to win great prizes
• Blogger Outreach to those who don’t have time for breakfast and current fans of McDonald’s
• Worked with NASCAR drivers Elliot Sadler and Kasey Kahne to promote the chicken and egg debate and web site

Results:

• More than 45k visitors on sampling event day
• 150k visitors in first month
• 45k completed dance-offs
• 162 million impressions
• Whatcamefirst.com sent overwhelming traffic to McDonalds.com on May 15
• National Media-worked with US Communications and the national market specific agency to secure over 82.5 million impression in top tier national media
• High profile placement drove spikes in discussion and web traffic
  Chicago Tribune (129 comments) and Consumerist.com (166 comments)
• Week leading up to the launch nearly 400 blog posts
• “McDonald’s free chicken sandwich” the 13^th most Googled search term on the May 15^th National Sampling Day

What’s next for McDonald’s?

As for their chicken offering it will continue to be part of the menu. (Yay!) and they are already on their next chicken promotion for McNuggets.  As for social media- they say it will continue to be growing in importance and we’ll see more from them moving forward.