Bringing it home to Spartanville

Eric Bowe — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 15:06:10 +0000

Social relevance is a desire to get into a person’s inner social circle — something worth sharing with friends. This is more than a facebook “Like”, which is an action requiring very little effort from both parties – consumers just need to click a button and their in, while markerters just need to create a page and watch the fans arrive in droves — or not.

Let’s face it, social media is a weak play generating artifical bonds that can be easily erased. As marketers we need to try harder. Buzz requires relevance. Not relevance on the brand’s terms, rather a combination of our target’s relevance in a space true to the brand — a space the brand can own. Passion is key. If you want to be socialy relevant long term, the brand space must be something the target is passionate about. Successful social marketing lies at the crosshairs of relevance and passion.

From a consumer perspective the easiest way to get to “me” is by embracing my passion, and Johnsonville Brats is inching their way into America’s weekend passions. To begin with Johnsonville has the big Taste Grill Semi traveling the country giving our free brats at major events throughout the country. This lives within a passion (and hits the spot), however, the semi is limited to one passion point per weekend. So, the brand needed to go deeper. It needed to go to Spartanville.

Spartanville lives at Michigan State University. Johnsonville took over a part of Spartan Stadium with it’s brand in context of a passion shared by 75,000 fans during those fall Saturday’s. Spartanville lives at the crosshairs of the fan passion and the brand. For years Johnsonville has been running the “-ville” brand suffix campaign to reshape food genres (“Pastaville”), time (“Weekendville”), and consumers (Share your Ville video contest). Sometimes it seemed like the brand was talking to itself, other times it may hit home for some people in a relevant way.

Relevance is tricky — the broader the relevance the more likely a brand can’t own it (i.e. think Valentine’s Day or ), and the narrower the relevance the more targeted and more costly the effort. Micro-relevance, like micro-conversations, is at the heart of social marketing, but are rarely done due to the logistics of time, cost and effort (and sometimes expertise).

Only 428 Miles to Bratfest

Eric Bowe — Mon, 25 May 2009 14:36:33 +0000

This weekend while you and your neighbors are firing up your backyard grills for the obligatory Memorial Weekend BBQ, Johnsonville is celebrating Brat Fest in Madison, Wisconsin.

Based on the web site, there seems to be a large crowd, good time, and plenty of brats consumed. I received an email on Friday notifying me of Brat Fest. Too bad I didn’t know a little earlier. It is about a 428 mile hike from my backyard to theirs. In reality, I wouldn’t make the trek, but this highlights a bit of a marketing conundrum:

Do you broadcast the party across the country, knowing most people cannot come or don’t care?
Or, do you bring the party to them?

The former is kind of a tease, less effective, and could be misconstrued as brat-spam (for those who don’t care). The latter is the preferred method, because a convenient local Brat Fest would increase participation. However, a Brat Tour would be very expensive to activate. So, what do you do? Probably something in between – something more personal – something in everyone’s backyard. One recommendation would be to build off Johnsonville’s current campaign (“Creat your own ______ville“). The campaign is based on everyone has a Johnsonville, so what is your ____ville? Building on this premise of the personal backyard BBQ, why wouldn’t Brat Fest extend across the country on Memorial Day weekend? By scheduling Brat Fest on Memorial Day, Johnsonville can begin to own the traditional Memorial Day BBQ , similar to Butterball, turkey and Thanksgiving. Brat Fest campaign elements could include:

A May promotion building up to Memorial Day weekend.
Coupons or other promotion to increase the use of brats during the traditional Memorial Day BBQ.
A counter on the site including all brats consumed across the country.
An interactive map of brat sales or user contributed content celebrating Brat Fest.

This recommended approach would still treat Madison as Brat Fest headquarters, but would extend the celebration around the country. So, even people who couldn’t travel 428 miles to the festival, could still travel to they backyard, fire up the grill, and be a part of the celebration.

Bowe's Blog » Johnsonville

Bringing it home to Spartanville

Only 428 Miles to Bratfest