OFFICIAL LIVEBLOG: BlogHer Business '09 - Prego Case Study

Session Description: Sponsored conversations are certainly in the social media news stream lately. This case study is an example of how one Campbell brand, Prego, encouraged unfiltered conversation around core brand values of its product. Through this campaign, Campbell was able to support women in their quest to find and share value with one another during these tough economic times, which ultimately improved the image of its brand among the consumers who took part. Not only was Campbell able to reach millions of consumers, but it was able to interact with them in a way that was authentic, not forced. m80’s Maureen Larsen will be joined by Patti McGreal, a Prego brand representative, and one of the bloggers who took part in the conversation to discuss what motivates bloggers to participate in such conversations…and what brands can learn and gain from it.

Jory says I adore this case study because it inspired all of us.One of the things that we like to say if you align with a conversation authentically, there will be halo effect. This campaign launched in the fall -08 and we were able to see the halo effect.

Patti: I work in global advertising department. In August 08 our Prego brand manager contacted me and said I have extra dollars to test something online. Can we create some banner ads? At the time we were also launching a social media monitoring program so we could understand what was being said about our brands in the space. I noticed that there was a lot of conversation about the eocnomy and using our brands to make meals at home. I thought we could try something differently and contacted Maureen at m80

Maurreen:  After call from Patti I  thought of leveraging the BlogHer community. Thought it was an opportunity to tap into individuals who were talking about the economy. We didn't want it to be brand heavy but rather to corral the women who  had an affinity for a brand and have a conversation. In times of economic downturn
women go to iconoclastic brands.

The campaign was to inspire women to talk about value. You could generate a meal for under $10 using Prego Italian sauce. We wanted to inspire them to share their recipes.

Jory: A sponsored conversation. It's not about the product. It wasn't about Prego. We didn't ask them about the product but we got these women to talk about  something important.

Patti: The brand was nervous about this approach . They asked, "What if they didn't talk about our brand. We're spending all this money." We definitely had to jump through some hoops.

Patti: Worst fear. When the conversation started, the women started talking about how they were switching to private label brands but then they started talking about Prego as well.

Jory: Even though its an evolving conversation there was media to get the word out and women took the conversation off Blogher to have the conversation on their own blogs.

Patti: Whenever we do a campaign we need to understand the ROI. I couldn't guarantee the ROI. We decided to agree that we would look at the conversation and the sentiment ratio: was it more positive or negative before and after the conversation. We discovered it was much more positive after the campaign. We also agreed  we did see that during the six week camapaign that our recipe downloads increased. We didn't have to tell them to go there, they just went to our site to go there. Sparked a lot more ideas for Campbell.

Question: What are you doing to continue this?
Patti: Now have a recipes under $10  section on our site.We've learned it doesn't just have to come through Global advertising but can come from other areas of the corporation to continue the conversation.

Jory: Ideally,brands are banding together to keep an ongoing presence in front of these groups so you don't have to reinvent the wheel. How was this resonating with Campbell's?

Patti: We brought together cross functional departments and created a committee to figure out who are we touching to monitor this so we don't inundate those consumers. We're sharing plans and being transparent with each other.

Jory: How did you coordinate the program?

Maureen: I work with the media team for the Campbell brand. It had to be word of mouth plus media. We needed to have a springboard so it can creach a critical mass so the conversations could take off.

Jory: Key attribute to the campaign was  that it was not overly branded.

Maureen: One of our social media best practices is that we want to make sure that bloggers don't feel compelled to talk about the brand. The brand is the softer sell. Here is the arena where the conversation takes place. Tell us how you are coping with the economy not how you are using Prego. What we found that the time that is spent on the page is longer than the average. Average amount of time spent on page was two minutes. They were taking the time to share their comments. No prize for mentioning Prego. These were naturally occurring conversations.

Jory: We have had multiple incentives. If you pick the right topic the incentives doesn't matter as much.

Question: What was the prep work done to make sure that everything was in place?

Patti: We let all our cross-functional partners know what we were doing. The conversation did start very privately and focused on private label products. The brand was nervous andsaid, "We told you this was going to happen."  The brand group suggested taking the conversation down. I said, "Let's just see what happens." That was the best thing that happened. It allowed the conversation to evolve. We got everyone in the loop. We really just let it happen naturally because we felt that was the best way to approach the social media space.

Question: How many other blog sites picked it up?

Maureen: Over 42 sites picked it up. 2500 comments on those blogs.

Jory: What tools did you use to monitor?

Maureen: Our internal monitoring mixed with monitoring software.

Patti: When we looked at our SEO rankings we dramatically increased. We were the first five search results on a multiple search results.

Question: Did SEO increase on Prego related Searches?

Patti:  It helped brand awareness

Gina Garrubbo of Blogher: How did the brand feel how they felt they stepped out versus competitor?

Patti: They are already thinking about how they could do it again. The interesting thing it could benefit the entire category. We haven't seen our competitors doing it.

Gina Garrubbo of Blogher said: I was at Unilever recently and Ragu said, "We wish we had done that."