Brands, bloggers mix, then ideas pop

Reviewing consumer blog posts has been an enlightening experience for Gina Allgaier, director of marketing for Kraft Foods.

Fans of a popular flavored drink mix have revealed a number of unique ways to use the product that don't involve drinking it. Deck stain. Hair dye. Lip gloss.

While Kraft likely will never market Kool-Aid for any of those uses, the posts are the sort of thing that companies like to see when relying on blogger content to boost online marketing. They are creative, personal and not part of a corporate branding campaign.

"It's easy when you're creating a product and working with a brand all the time to assume it's used in just one way," Allgaier said after a panel discussion Friday at Collective Bias' SoFabCon blogger conference. "Now, because of bloggers, we're learning all the different ways the product is being used. It's very interesting and fun. And, ultimately, it generates more sales."

Finding additional ways to connect with consumers and generate sales is what drives Fortune 500 companies such as Kraft to utilize more grass-roots marketing efforts. Kraft and Tyson Foods were among the companies represented at the two-day conference. Kraft and Tyson -- which are sometimes competing brands -- shared the stage with three of Collective Bias' top bloggers during a nearly 45-minute session titled "Brand and Blogger Fails."

Collective Bias, the social shopper marketing firm based in Bentonville, has helped organize the power of user-generated content for corporate marketers. Kraft and Tyson have each used Collective Bias in close to 20 campaigns, relying on what the marketing company calls its Social Fabric, a network of 2,500 bloggers. Other customers include Disney, Nestle and Kmart.

Bringing companies and the bloggers together was the goal of Collective Bias' second SoFabCon event. More than 300 bloggers attended, and the brand representatives there said it was a valuable experience.

Tyson Foods' manager of consumer marketing, Karen Doan, pointed to the event as a rare opportunity for the brands and bloggers to get in a room together. Outside of a few social media-driven events throughout the year and the monitoring of blog posts, there is limited interaction between the two sides.

A benefit of that interaction was on display during the "Brand and Blogger Fails" session. A question about promoting social responsibility prompted the light bulb to go off for both Doan and Allgaier.

Tyson, for example, donates a portion of proceeds from a particular product to help combat childhood hunger. Doan said she has never included those facts in a marketing breakdown for bloggers writing about the product.

All three of the blogger panelists said they wanted to know about efforts such as this so they could include them in their promotions. Including socially responsible components in campaigns would make readers more inclined to buy products, blogger Kelly Tomlinson said.

"We need to be listening to them, and a lot of times we just speak," Doan said. "We throw things out there, and are we good enough at listening, actually, really hearing them?"

Allgaier agreed with her counterpart.

"It is a good opportunity for us to learn from them, what they're hearing from their readers and how they're using products in a real way," Allgaier said.

User-generated content is critical to companies because of the value consumers place on word-of-mouth when making purchases. A 2012 Nielsen report said 92 percent of those surveyed trust recommendations from friends or family more than any other form of advertising or marketing.

Some of the content used by brands is sponsored, meaning bloggers are compensated. Others, such as those unique uses for Kool-Aid, are more organic.

Tapping into that creativity and finding additional ways to reward bloggers is an important part of growing the relationship, Doan said. Tyson is working on the possibility of including customer recipes on packaging. It's something Doan said she has wanted to include in marketing campaigns for a while, but there are so many corporate hurdles that she hasn't been able to pull it off yet.

"I think there is light at the end of the tunnel," Doan said. "You've got to go through legal and through packaging. ... I swear I'm going to get there.

"These are real, live people. They are out there on our behalf. It's important to us."

Monday Business on 05/12/2014

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