Walkers Crisps: Yahoo Do us a Favour for our Flavours

After munching through a packet of Walkers Crispy Duck & Hoisin crisps, I noticed the Yahoo logo on the back of the packet. It prompted me to have a look at how the Walkers “Do us a flavour” campaign has been going; it has always seemed strange that Walkers would want to partner with Yahoo when over 90% of UK searches occur through Google.

The campaign began in July 2008 with an expected 250,000 crisp flavours entries, however Walkers received more than 1.1 million entries for a £50,000 prize and 1% share of future royalties. If the sales match those of the BBQ flavour, for example, that would equate to £57,000 a year. Votes cast on the Walkers website between now and May 1 2009 will decide which flavour stays permanently on sale, and the creator will win £50,000, on top of the £10,000 that each finalist has already received. Since the website launched it has seen a total of 2.4m sessions, with visitors spending an average of nine minutes on-line per session.

Walkers first tested its multimedia campaigning with its "Brits Trips" promotion in 2008, which generated a 2,575% growth in unique users to its website between June 2007 and June 2008.

Walkers are working with the mobile telephone network 02 to allow free text voting and have had a very powerful off-line marketing campaign with celebrity involvement, national and local press coverage and wide on-air media coverage.

All other methods are tried and tested forms of marketing, where the online partnership with Yahoo is a relatively new concept. At first this appears as a mash-up of two needy brands who both have a national audience, Yahoo with a very low UK user base and Walkers wanting to take advantage of the reach and cost effectiveness the internet can offer.

How important are Crisps to a UK consumer?
The summary section from the “Snack Foods Market Report Plus 2008" states:

Penetration of snack foods in the UK is high, standing at around 85% for potato snacks and around half the population for other savoury snacks and snack nuts. Nevertheless, the high degree of NPD and intense competition ensure that the market remains dynamic. Both the UK and global markets are dominated by PepsiCo. Research commissioned specifically for this report revealed that penetration of the US company’s core Walkers brand in the UK was above 59% in 2008, which was significantly higher than that of its nearest competitor brand, Pringles

85% of the UK’s population eats crisps or potato snacks and Walkers have a 59% market share of this consumer base. So walkers are a large player within the UK and they continue to stay in this position by promoting the brand and engaging their audience.

Offsite marketing is key to creating awareness online, Internet Marketing is becoming more like an online public relations exercise on a scale that traditional PR could struggle to comprehend and effectively manage.
Awareness is important, but it creates an appetite that needs to be satisfied. Once consumers have shown interest in the concept, the campaign website needs to continue to deliver and ensure that consumers are engaged to complete the campaign objectives.

I visited the website and was greeted with a full screen animation that took time to load, once it loaded the website had been stretched to fit my screen and the animated visuals were low quality and pixelated. When I tried to watch the TV advert for Crispy Duck & Hoisin, it had no sound although the video played.

According to Walkers, the average time spent on their campaign website is nine minutes. I wonder how much of that time is spent waiting for the website to load.
The whole website has been created in a graphic designers favourite technology, ‘Flash’. Flash has not vastly moved forwards as a platform for developing websites since its original conception.

Websites that are completely designed using flash are often accessibility and usability nightmares. Web 2.0 elements are often not included; these elements are increasingly becoming familiar to internet users and defined as a standard.

Flash elements are now common place within websites, flash offers great portability on-line and can be easily embedded into a website or page as a specific element often used to stream live data from another source.

Flash websites are also bulky in file size and this means loading times, back on 56k dial up load times were common place, but now thanks to broadband we all have become used to the lightning speeds of email, messaging, file and photo transfer. Forcing people to wait for a flash presentation to load is very off putting in a modern online world.

So why join forces with the 2.79% Yahoo UK Search Market Share?
Yahoo are offering Walkers coverage on six of its channels, including Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Eurosport, each online channel will take on one of the finalist flavours. Yahoo has also developed a bespoke video channel for Walkers using their Yahoo Video platform.

From a senior decision makers perspective the offerings available from Yahoo could appear as a nicely packaged solution, with everything required to launch a campaign on-line. The problem is that internet users are voting with their fingers and choose a variety of different on-line services to frequently visit.
Services such as YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Blogger and Social Go are all experts with what they offer, each with their own specialised user interfaces and structures that allow content to be easily shared or embedded.

The days of one service for all needs are gone, simply because no one organisation can spend enough time on all aspects of what they offer to compete with niche on-line services specifically designed and created for common needs.

Google has spread itself widely across the internet with many different websites and technology’s under its belt. Although Google seems to understand the benefit of separate specialist entity’s offering an array of services.

Where Yahoo is still trying to put all its eggs in one basket and offer one login for all needs. This is one of the reasons why Yahoo have not been as successful as Google, combined with a inadequate Search Engine algorithm that often provides irrelevant search results.
In return, Walkers have featured the Yahoo! logo on more than 50 million promotional packets of Walkers Crisps. Consumers are being urged to search for ‘Do us a flavour’ on Yahoo! which will then drive them to the video channel, to view the campaign content and vote for their favourite flavour.

Has this approach worked for Walkers?
According to Walkers, this has been a successful campaign as initially they only expected 250k entries’ for new flavours from the public. When they received over 1.1 million entries’ they were impressed with the results.

What surprises me is the minimal amount of support on-line; The DoUsAFlavourYoutube Channel has only 4 subscribers and the Yahoo Video Channel only has 7 people who have favoured the network.

Internal buy-in from the Walkers team has obviously been very minimal; I would expect that more than seven people have been involved with promoting this campaign online. It is a true sign of lack of internal buy-in and a possible reason to why the online marketing has not been as successful as it could have been.

The most popular campaign video on the Yahoo Video network has been:Cajun Squirrel…We ask Martyn Wright – How??!! it has had 21,347 views but no user comments.

On YouTube this is a different matter, the most popular video has been Gary Lineker presents: The Top T… with 51,147 views and 12 comments. The comments provide a true insight to what people think about the campaign:

• “he’s a bit dozy…. he takes the mick out ogf veggies too. veggie chicken would have been nice… "
• “tell me this isn’t the former england captain that i’d respected and held in high regard since I was a little girl. “
• “probably lineker’s worst television performance”

Only four of the twelve comments were related to the Walkers campaign objective. So it appears Youtube has offered higher views and social engagement.
To put this into perspective, nearly all the videos have been online for less than two months. The following video has been on Youtube for a month and has gained 1,433,089 views, its UK specific and shows the audience that could have been captured by Walkers.

You can watch this video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWEOHd9JNmk

Has this worked for Walkers?
Well yes it has, but the approach used has been wrong. Almost as if the Yahoo all-inclusive package was an easy attempt to move a traditional UK brand into the on-line marketing arena. Lack of internal buy-in of online marketing from Walkers has been clearly identified from the minimal support from the team behind the campaign. The over use of Lineker is tiring and the jokes don’t get any better.

People today are responding to fresh new celebrity’s and popular culture combined with a twist of humour. If one of our biggest UK brands is making these mistakes on-line, where does it leave everyone else?

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Display Trust and Build Customer loyalty with Internet Marketing

From ongoing development of technology the amount of channels now available for communication has increased vastly. A knock-on effect of this is that now people can reach audiences they would have never been able to before, because of this niche services, products and information are becoming more readily available online.

With Search Engine Marketing (SEM), even higher conversion rates can now be achieved from the visitors your website receives. SEM is great for generating new visitors to your website, these visitors are your most valuable asset for current and future success.

So how do you encourage repeat visits and customer loyalty? By treating these customers as individuals, just as you would offline.

Let’s imagine you have a shop front and a customer walks in the door. If you knew their name you would personally welcome them, and if you don’t you would be ready to impress them with your knowledge, advice, products and services. Online you don’t get the opportunity to personally greet people and welcome them, so you have to employ other tactics to treat them as you would offline.

Include a simple welcome message on your homepage, offer recommended products and services. Display additional information and advice in case the customer may want to find out more deatils. If they have registered on your website before then you should display a welcome back message, if they have not, then encourage them to sign up to your website.

This helps build a customer relationship, next you need to help the customer trust you and your website. The following points are steps to help you achieve this:

• Your website should be user friendly – Offline, your customers will have to drive to a shop, find somewhere to park and then browse the products. Now if everything is clearly displayed and logically categorised a customer is more likely to stay and browse. Online, customers have much shorter attention spans and will quickly move to another website if they cannot find what they want. If it is hard to find key products, the website is slow or after using the search box a product is not found, then a customer will quickly leave and move onto a competitor website.

• Prompt, quick, responsive customer service – The speed that you deal with customer requests online is much more important than when offline. Online customers want to find what they need as quick as possible, if they have problems sourcing what they need or have had problems with your website then they will need clear contact methods displayed. Creating clear methods of contact is important, but ensuring that contact from customers is dealt with efficiently and effectively is an important part of building trust and relationships with your customers. When communicating with customers, try to make the message as personalised as possible so they feel valued. If standard messages are used customers can feel unimportant and unwanted. Personalised auto responses to messages are a good idea to let the customer know their message has been received and how quickly you will aim to respond to their request.

• Privacy not Piracy – Privacy statements are a important part of allowing your website visitors to understand what you intend to do with their data. In this day and age everyone is scared of receiving spam and having their bank account cleared out. The banks have not made enough effort to provide confidence and trust to their customers and therefore have been abused with many fraudulent attempts to gain customer details. If your customers are not sure how their information will be used, they may be tempted to use a competitor site that clearly states that their information will not be resold. You should display a privacy statement prominently so site visitors know that their information is safe.

• You have to earn customer loyalty – If a website visitor had a bad experience with your company they are much less likely to return for future purchases. Dealing with complaints as an opportunity to turn around the situation and continue the relationship with your customers is the best approach. has a negative experience with your company, they are less likely to return and the same holds true for online customers. If they feel they have not received good service, they will not likely purchase from you again.

Your online customers are even more important than your offline customers, they require less time and management. You should aim to exceed all customers expectations in hope that they will be impressed, tell their friends and return to purchase time and time again. The internet is great for spreading messages quickly, you need to ensure only positive messages are communicated by your customers, otherwise a bad reputation could quickly become a very hard problem to resolve.

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Social Internet Marketing

If you are good at talking to people and enjoy meeting many new faces, networking can be the ideal option for you to generate business. Although many people realise that talk is cheap and action is important. You have to remember that people buy from people, a brand provides trust but if the customer service is shocking or the representative does not treat you with respect, you would probably not bother purchasing. Networking can be a low cost method of getting your name out there, and with online networking you don’t have to be the most confident person in social situations.

Online networking now offers many methods to gain visibility and talk to potential contacts, websites such as Twitter, Ecademy and facebook all allow social networking. It is fairly easy to set-up an account on these websites, they ask for basic information and then allow you to create a profile page. Often from this you can join groups which are suited to your industry or audience, these groups promote and encourage discussion where you can join in.

Twitter.com is a micro-blogging website that repeatedly asks its users one question – “What are you doing?” Peoples responses come in many forms, often people publish websites that they have found useful or are currently reading. Businesses generally discourage using the internet to communicate with others outside of the workplace. This is a very big brother approach and it makes you wonder if productivity and sales would increase if employees were allowed the freedom to connect and network with people on many different platforms.
In my experience I often have had access to instant messaging programs whilst working, my previous roles have often been quite demanding. So I would use these programs to ask others work related questions and also to have a little joke or laugh from time to time when encouragement is needed. Social networking allows for the same level of interaction and helps you expand your professional profile and contact list.

Businesses that create company profiles on these websites would allow the business to talk directly to its customers. This can be very effective to shout about how successful the organisation has been or to highlight current special offers and incentives.
Ecademy is a different website for social networking, it is all about building up contacts and then pushing your message out to your contact list in hope that they will be interested in what you have to offer. Ecademy requires ongoing payments to gain full access to all of its features, although if you request that your friends sign up, you can try out the full access for a limited time.

Facebook is very much like MySpace and other ‘Friend’ networking websites, it started out as a website aimed for students. It quickly turned into a massive website with millions of users. Facebook allows you to create a profile and is primarily designed to share photos by ‘tagging ‘ areas of a photograph to identify who is in each picture. This alone does not provide the best platform to promote your business, but recently facebook has started to offer Pay Per Click advertising opportunities to suit all budgets. The demographic segmentation offers more targeting options than standard pay per click, for example you can select the following criteria to choose who to market your message to:

• Location
• Sex
• Age
• Keywords
• Education
• Workplace
• Relationship Status
• Relationship Interests

 

When creating a profile on these social networking websites it is useful to understand how best to get your point across and present yourself online. Your profiles need to be catchy and display a level of impact when someone visits. A photograph is a must these days, people like to know who they are talking to. From including a picture, visitors to your profile will have a added level of empathy when they learn about you. Remember that pictures can say a thousand words (Good and Bad!) consider including product images, photos from trade events and award ceremony’s within your profile.

These days website design and development organisations often offer professional social networking design and creation for you, although they need to understand the art of presentation and effective communication to really offer a strong service.
From using social networking websites for business use you can take advantage of these closed community’s who only allow members to talk to each other. If your competitors have not yet taken full advantage of these methods you could be the first person to offer your products and services.

There are many ways to develop your online presence, search engine marketing and pay per click are more structured methods of promoting your business online. However, social networking is relatively cheap and could provide the viability you require.

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Drive new customers to your website with Internet Advertising

Advertising is a fact of business, the objective is to push your message in front of people that would consider purchasing. Organisations achieve this every day and we all are impressionable and susceptible to these marketing messages. Cold calling and mailing does not work as well as including your message where your target audience frequents. Many newspapers have large distribution lists and you could include a advertisement within the local or national press. It could be that while walking around your town someone hands you a flyer, you may not be interested but could refer someone who is from seeing the advert.

Although if you are in the mood or have some free time on your hands one of these messages could work. People generally ignore anything that they do not deem as important. Although the media is such a important part of our society and people seem to react to messages communicated by the media. Probably because the media provides entertainment alongside commercial marketing messages. This truly summarises traditional marketing and highlights why it does not provide the same returns as communicating your message to a pre-qualified audience.

Identifying and pre-qualified audiences are a important part of the marketing mix, it allows you to not waste time money and resources on people who would be less likely to purchase. With traditional marketing pre-qualified audiences can only be segmented into general themes, such as a Photography magazine would be the ideal place to promote a camera accessory. This is a basic level of segmentation, but I would expect most of the readers to have the general accessory’s required, because they already consider themselves experts within the field and this is why they bought the magazine in the first place. However a small percentage of people may not have all the accessory’s they require, so there is potential to sell to these people ifthey see your advertisement within the magazine.

Advertising and promotion on the Internet is a much more advanced form of marketing. People spend a lot of time on the internet since broadband is now readily available at a flat rate fee. The internet is now becoming as much of a social activity as Television and Radio used to be in the past, both of which now have on-line counterparts in this modernised world.

Internet advertising offers two popular methods to promote your marketing messages, Pay Per Click advertising and Search Engine Optimisation. With these methods you can focus your time, resources and money on specific keywords and phrases that people already use to find your products or services. You can even gain estimates on how many people search for a particular phrase or keyword each month. This provides you with strong indications on how to direct your online marketing campaigns.

From promoting your business in this manor you are going to gain pre-qualified traffic that will offer very a favourable return on investment when compared to traditional methods. For example if someone visits your bed and breakfast website from Google, there is a high chance that they are already interested in what you have to offer. Not many people will end up on a B&B website unless they are actually looking for somewhere to stay. This greatly reduces the amount of effort required to generate new business leads, and leaves your website with the challenge of converting these visitors into customers.

Develop your search engine marketing visibility plan for the year ahead and don’t forget that search engine traffic is already qualified and targeted traffic. From effective Search Engine Optimisation and Pay Per Click Management your online presence could shoot to new levels and generate the business your website deserves. Online marketing certainly demonstrates best practice methods that are more intelligent and targeted, which is more than we can say for the TV commercials that interrupt your favourite program.
 

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