Name Your Potato Chip
If you could imagine your own flavor of potato chip, what would it be?
Cheddar Beer. Spicy Thai. Morrocan Curry. Chai. Strawberry Cream.
Those were the top flavors chosen by more than 4,500 chip-eaters in the Pacific Northwest last year when Kettle Foods launched a new campaign at area trade shows. The company then partnered with marketers at eROI to send Flav-O-Gram newsletters to the initial group of 4,500 and announce the Crave-O-Meter, a web-based rating scale that allowed anyone to vote online for one of the flavors. Between January and March, the number of chip lovers signed up to receive Flav-O-Grams skyrocketed to 32,000.
The email addresses were added to Kettle’s database, putting the all-natural chipmaker in direct contact with members of its target market as they voted for a new flavor.
“We have an active communication with our fan base,” said Jim Green, company spokesperson. “People had been writing to us all the time to suggest flavors.”
Kettle’s marketing team wanted to leverage its loyal customer base to raise brand awareness among potential customers, Mr. Green added.
The Crave-O-Meter was the most engaging element of the campaign because it created a customer touch-point by allowing the customer to be a part of the Kettle brand. Voting choices ranged from “would try anything once, except this,” to “I’m on the fence,” to “This sounds delicious! I could eat an entire bag.” Carefully timed follow-up emails were sent to update the status of the Crave-O-Meter and keep the brand in customers’ minds.
“Kettle is a great case study of a company that did a successful viral campaign that was true to its brand in the process,” said eROI president and founder Ryan Buchanan. “If something has legs to it, the web is a great test medium.”
Buchanan believes the online Crave-O-Meter contest was successful for eight reasons:
1) Consistency with brand
2) Creative idea
3) Attention-getting in its implementation
4) Alluring because of incentives to participate
5) Easy to pass along
6) Accomplished inexpensively
7) Easily understood for media coverage
8) Novel enough for people to make repeat website visits
Mr. Buchanan believes other attempts at online viral campaigns have been less effective because they were not faithful to the brand.
“This is likely to be extremely good in increasing brand loyalty among existing customers,” said marketing professor Elliot Maltz, of the Willamette MBA program.
The demographic data collected on the target market will be useful for future marketing strategies.
Maltz adds: “The research has the potential of providing significant additional insights over and above the current product launch by providing some guidance to Kettle about the characteristics of their current customer base.”
He added one sign of wariness, however.
“The [online] research only asks for a response to the name of a flavor and does not test response to the taste of the flavor through taste tests,” Maltz said.
Kettle Foods said it coordinated taste tests at trade shows and was surprised to find that the results matched those of the online surveys.
The winner?
Cheddar Beer and Spicy Thai eventually tied for first.
The Cheddar Beer flavor helped Kettle Foods design its next campaign: a new drink-inspired flavor.