Launch your New Product with Crowd Sourcing

Social Media at its Best:

Social media is a valuable tool to solicit and engage potential customers - let them create and pick the next Big Thing.  Think of crowd sourcing as an online tool or think tank of ideas followed by a social media vote for the best idea.  Rewarding the winner can really drive success. 

Examples are endless: Samuel Adams asked their consumers to create a new crowd sourced beer.  Arizona Iced Tea is asking consumers to create its next flavor.

Outside of the US, McDonald's has crowd sourced burger recipes and Lay's create-a-chip contests produced Caesar Salad flavored chips is Australia, Shrimp chips in Egypt Sausage-flavored chips in Poland.

Lay's is now launching a $1 Million winner campaign through it's "Do us a Flavor" Facebook vote.  Facebook is changing its rules with the familiar "Like" button being replaced with an "I'd Eat That" button.  Lay's will select three finalists - all of which will be developed into flavors and sold in early 2013.  Then a final Facebook vote will decide on a winner.

Food for thought: What a tremendous way to create a buz with a head-to-head flavor showdown.

Gateway into Canadian & Emerging Markets

How do Canadians Measure Up?

So why write a book about the Canadian food industry, how we eat, shop, buy and sell value-added food products?  There is no single source guideline that depicts the Canadian experience from field to table. 

Why is Agri-food such an important asset for Canada?  Why do companies want to set up shop and diversify their businesses into Canadian or developing markets?  What is so enticing about being a "Canuck"?  Why is the Canadian economy embracing economic growth ahead of the US which is still experiencing high unemployment rates, outsourced manufacturing trends, declining health and nutrition standards and a sluggish recovery out of an economic recession? 

Our food and beverage industry is flourishing.  We respect our health and diets.  We love social media.  Despite huge geographical distribution hurdles, our retailers, wholesalers, and food service industries are thriving.  The Canadian marketplace is a hidden treasure that drives our economy. 

Canada truly is the land or opportunity.  This book will enlighten you with an in depth analyses of current market trends; best practices of multinationals; tips on launching your products,

technologies or  processes into Canadian or emerging markets; and even ideas on how to annihilate your competitor. 

Whether you are a food scientist, an executive, a health food addict, an athlete, someone working within the Agri-food industry, an entrepreneur, a dietician, a nutritionist, a consumer, or food junkie, you will surely gain a better insight into what all the excitement is about - food for thought!

                                                    Coming soon...a new book entitled -

"Food for thought. Gateway into Canadian and Emerging Markets - Tips for Success"

Health & Wellness in America

How do North Americans Measure Up?

So why write a book about health & wellness in America, what we eat, and how we take care of ourselves?  There is no single source guideline that depicts the North American experience from field to table and what to do along the way.  Diets are everywhere and most do not work in the long term.  Exercise is not always an achievable and sustaining lifestyle alternative.

Why is health and wellness an important asset?  Why do companies want to set up shop, diversify their businesses and get everyone exercising and dieting to look and feel great?  What is so enticing about being a "Healthy American or Lean Canuck"?  Why is the family unit embracing the ideal aura of healthy living while realizing declining health and nutrition standards when compared to other cultures like Norway? 

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 1.5 billion adults aged 20 and older are overweight worldwide.  As if that weren’t anxiety-inducing enough, more than 200 million men and nearly 300 million women among them also qualify as obese. 

Obesity is defined as having a body mass index (a ratio of weight in relation to height) of 30 or above. That's equal to a five-foot, six-inch (168-cm) person weighing 186 pounds (84.4 kg) or a six-foot (183-cm) person at 221 pounds (100 kg).

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force said the guidelines echo its 2003 recommendations on screening for obesity, but take into account more recent evidence that adults can lose weight and keep it off with the right help.

"The good news is that even what you might consider to be modest rather than radical weight loss has tremendous health benefits," including lowering diabetes risk and blood pressure, said Susan Curry, a member of the task force and dean of the University of Iowa College of Public Health in Iowa City.

"Losing 5 percent of your body weight has tremendous health benefits, and intensive behavioral counseling programs help you do that and sustain it," Curry told Reuters Health. "Your primary care provider can, we hope, help you to find evidence-based programs."

The need to address weight gain nationally has grown as America tallies the health and economic costs of its obesity epidemic. More than two-thirds of the country's adults can be classified as overweight or obese.

Effective weight-loss programs, Curry said, include both nutrition and exercise support. They should help people address any barriers they have to making - and maintaining - changes in their lifestyle.

Coming soon...a new book entitled -

"Food for thought. Health & Wellness in America - Tips for Success"

Part 4. E-Marketing Strategies.- Social KPI's

Although it can be challenging to organize your team around social KPIs that tie into your overall marketing goals, it’s not impossible.  At Buddy Media, their data shows that every share on Facebook generates an average of $2.10 in incremental sales. Ticketmaster has reported that every time a user posted on their news feed that they bought a ticket from Ticketmaster, friends spent an additional $5.30 on Ticketmaster.

How can one company selling the same type of product--a car--see unequivocal success while another says it doesn’t even know if a consumer has seen the ad?  Through Facebook, Ford has earned lifelong brand advocates who will forever think differently about the company.  Kia Motors, on the other hand,  are not taking a rigorous and systematic approach to measuring Facebook marketing, as evidenced by their inability to communicate their results and build a community at scale.

The answer is simple: Facebook is a site that connects nearly a billion people to each other globally. However, it’s your job as an advertiser to say something that’s interesting, and to measure the results.  Facebook has created a large and vibrant ecosystem to help you out.  In order to succeed, companies need to organize internally and optimize content to get the right message to the right people at the right time.  If the advertiser isn’t organized to connect with people and publish the right content, failure is inevitable.

No wonder some brands continue to ask what Facebook is doing for them. In reality, these brands should be asking what they can do for people. Criticizing any platform is easy. Much easier, it seems for many advertisers, than organizing internally and publishing compelling content.

Part 3. E-Marketing Strategies.- Measure ROI

How do we measure ROI with Social Media?  Return on investment (ROI) is the measure of an activity’s results relative to its cost. The equation for determining ROI, in its most simplistic form, has been presented in a SmartBrief Guide to Social Media as: (Results - costs) ÷ costs = ROI

The equation takes two things into account: Money spent (that’s the investment) and the resulting revenue/savings (that’s the return). Anything that isn’t money (such as the time you spend maintaining your social presence) must be converted into dollars and cents before it can be factored

into your calculations.  Results come in two ways: Income and cost reductions. 

·       Income includes any time your social media presence prompts someone to buy a product from you, donate something to you or hire you to perform a service.

·       Cost reductions are savings on existing business functions that can now be performed at a cheaper rate because of social tools.  Companies often trumpet social media success by announcing results, but outcomes are only half the story. Seeing results from your social media efforts is great, but if you’re spending $200,000 a year to generate $100,000 in sales via Twitter, you’re not seeing positive ROI.

What are Costs?  Anything that goes into the creation of a social media presence can be considered a cost.  Some common costs include:

·       Content creation costs: This could be something as cheap as licensing photos for blog posts or as expensive as buying audio-visual equipment to create videos and podcasts.

·       Training costs: Did you attend a social media conference?  Buy a book or two on social media best practices?  Bring in an expert to train your staff? These costs all count.

·       Software costs: There are dozens of great free social media clients and tools out there. But if you’re serious about determining the ROI of your efforts, you’ll want to at least consider investing in a premium social media client because paid clients offer more robust features and better tracking options than free programs.

·       Labor costs: This is often the biggest cost associated with a social media campaign – and it’s also the one most likely to be overlooked. If you’ve hired a dedicated social media staff member or outsourced your social media efforts to an agency, that cost is easy to measure. If you’re doing it yourself or if one or more employees are working on the company’s social media presence in addition to their other duties, then the calculation becomes more difficult. Typically you’ll need to figure out how much time each person spent on social media and then multiply that figure by their rate. If someone is paid $200 a day and spends half their day on social media, the cost of their social media efforts is $100 per day.

Part 2. E-Marketing Strategies.- Amplify & Lead

3. Amplify  Once a consumer has decided which product to buy and makes a purchase, companies can use social media to amplify their engagement and foster loyalty.   For example, when Starbucks wanted to increase awareness of its brand, it launched a competition challenging users to be the first to tweet a photograph of one of the new advertising posters that the company had placed in six major US cities, providing winners with a $20 gift card.  This social-media brand advocacy effort delivered a marketing punch that significantly outweighed its budget.  Starbucks said that the effort was “the difference between launching with millions of dollars versus millions of fans.”

4. Lead  Social media can be used to lead consumers toward long-term behavioral changes. In the early stages of the consumer decision journey, this may involve boosting brand awareness by driving Web traffic to content about existing products and services.  Consider the example of when grooming-products group Old Spice introduced its Old Spice Man character to viewers, during the US National Football League’s 2010 Super Bowl.  The company’s ambition was to increase its reach and relevance to both men and women.  The commercial became a phenomenon: starring former player Isaiah Mustafa, it got more than 19 million hits across all platforms, and year-on-year sales for the company’s products jumped by 27 percent within six months.
Marketers also can use social media to generate buzz through product launches, as Ford did in launching its Fiesta vehicle in the United States.

Finally, social media can solicit consumer input after the purchase. Intuit, for example, has its community forums.  Starbucks uses MyStarbucksIdea.com to collect its customers’ views about improving the company’s products and services and then aggregates submitted ideas and prominently displays them on a dedicated Web site. That site groups ideas by product, experience, and involvement; ranks user participation; and shows ideas actively under consideration by the company and those that have been implemented.

Convert knowledge into action  Despite offering numerous opportunities to influence consumers, social media still accounts for less than 1 percent of an average marketing budget when most CEO's should be pushing it to 5% for maximum gain.

Part 1. E-Marketing Strategies.- Monitor & Respond

The new marketing environment strongly suggests that the most powerful social-media strategies focus on a limited number of marketing responses closely related to individual touch points along the consumer decision journey.  One of the most critical—monitoring what people say about your brand—is so important that it really is a core function of social media, transcending across the entire consumer decision journey.  Other strategies underpin efforts to use social media to respond to consumer comments, to amplify positive sentiment and activity, and to lead changes in the behavior and mind-sets of consumers.

1. Monitor  Knowing what’s said online about your products and services.  This should be a default social-media function, taking place constantly.   It’s also critical to communicate such feedback within the business quickly: whoever is charged with brand monitoring must ensure that information reaches relevant functions, such as communications, design, marketing, public relations, or risk.

2. Respond  Responding in order to counter negative comments and reinforce positive ones will only increase in importance.  The responsibility for taking action may fall on functions outside marketing, and the message will differ depending on the situation.  No response can be quick enough, and the ability to act rapidly requires the constant, proactive monitoring of social media—on weekends too.   By responding rapidly, transparently, and honestly, companies can positively influence consumer sentiment and behavior.