Put Down That Bacon Sarnie! Is Social Media Powerful Enough To Change Your Diet?


As part of a growing campaign, Meatless Monday has taken to social media to spread its cause. The movement which, as it says on the tin, encourages people not to eat meat on a Monday, can be traced back to the first world war, when civilians in America were encouraged to cut back on the amount of meat they ate by the government so it could be sent to feed soldiers and civilians in Europe, where supplies had been affected by the conflict.

But why is there a need for this now, in 2010? The campaign argues that eating less meat improves your health, will decrease the risk of chronic preventable illness and improve the health of the planet.

Would you go meatless on a Monday?

Would you go meatless on a Monday?

The campaign has a number of aspects which we like here at Social Media Library:

-The name. It sounds pretty catchy, probably deriving from the trend started by Twitter’s #FollowFriday. Alliterated titles like this have become more and more common since the Twitter explosion. It works well, in that it rolls off the tongue, encourages commentators to write about it and, of course, it can be slotted in to a Twitter hashtag just like that.

-On their blog, they have a section where businesses have pledged their allegiance to the idea, telling the public what they are doing to keep things meatless on a Monday. Within this, there are links to their blogs, which then host recipes or just blog posts that relate to meatless Monday. All great stuff for increasing the awareness of the campaign.

-On top of this, they are also on Facebook, with just under 7000 likes, allowing them to communicate to up to 13000 people in total.

-If we read between the lines of this campaign, the thinking could be that you are more likely to indulge on unhealthy products on the weekend. Whereas when you get back in to the weekly routine, you tend to think more healthily about what you are eating. It feels as though the start of a new week is a reset for your body. This ties in neatly with the name of the campaign.

 

These kind of causes are ripe for social media engagement, so long as campaigns utilise the technology correctly, alongside more traditional means of spreading the word. Meatless Monday are ticking a lot of the social media boxes. Whether you’ll ditch the bacon sarnie in their name though, is another thing entirely!

About The Author – Tom Clayton

Tom Clayton is an intern on the research at Social Media Library. He is a student from Nottingham and is going to college next year to study Economics, Physics, Computing and Mathematics.


Social Media Case Study, Thomas Clayton


The Random Factor: Why Your Brand Needs To Stay Alert To Social Media


For marketers, social media is basically useful for one thing – spreading your message. Pages and pages of discussion have been devoted to the best ways that a brand can use the new media to direct attention towards your product or service.

But what if fate takes hold and produces some random element which causes your product or service to gain attention?

Yesterday, Monster Munch began trending in the UK on Twitter. The reason for this was because one Debbie Taylor appeared on GMTV talking about how she’s eaten nothing else but Monster Munch for the last 10 years.

Debbie Taylor - Inadvertently kick-started a social media trend

Debbie Taylor - Inadvertently kick-started a social media trend

Upon seeing the crisps mentioned in trending topics, my first thought was that it must have originated from Monster Munch themselves. But no, a large amount of people were sufficiently amused/appalled by the tale of Debbie Taylor that it took hold and spread organically (even if only for a short period). So, rather than Monster Munch kick-starting a campaign which got the public talking, the public simply started talking, by themselves. A sure stroke of luck indeed!

However, could Monster Munch have done anything to maximise the opportunity presented by this slice of good fortune? Could they have effectively done what most brands do when using social media but in reverse, and used the public talking about them to kick-start a campaign?

While a portion of the country was talking about their brand, Monster Munch were nowhere to be seen.

Monster Munch

Monster Munch

A quick search reveals that they don’t have a Twitter account (although Walkers do) but they have a Facebook page and a, no longer updated, blog. For a brand with such a visible and marketable presence (the monsters!), this seems strange. By being active on Twitter, they would have seen the interest randomly generated in their product and they could have capitalised on it. An awful lot of people revealed their love for the crisp and their intention to buy some straight away. Monster Munch could have conversed with these people, built up relationships, made the conversation last longer and actually made something out of this randomly generated publicity. Instead, the monsters were hiding.

About the Author

Paul Barnett

Paul Barnett

Paul Barnett is a Social Media Analyst for Social Media Library, responsible for developing the content within Social Media Library. Paul lives in a world of blogs, blogs and more blogs, scouring the web and plucking out the juiciest information he finds. Previous to this, he worked as a Music Press Officer. He is also a freelance writer, an organiser of Scrabble Sunday and blogs about stuff that he does here.


Paul Barnett, Social Media Tips and Tricks


Indian Snack Uses Twitter To Track It’s Own Stock


The hippopotamus has a long and storied history with small birds. Traditionally this relationship has revolved around birds using hippos as fishing perches while they pluck troublesome insects from the hippo’s skin and clean its teeth. More recently, as the African animal moved to India, the hippo has given up the egrets and oxpeckers for a new avian partner; a blue variety that adheres to strict character limits. Also, this hippo is a mascot for a brand of potato chips.

In a campaign based on ‘speeding up awareness, top of mind recall and demand from consumers,’ Parle Agro and advertising partners Creativeland Asia have come up with something very special on Twitter, pushing the boundaries of what 140 characters can do for a snack food. What they have achieved, in a nutshell, is crowdsourced inventory tracking.

On March 17th 2010, the @HelloMeHippo twitter account sent out this message: “Hippo ask you tell to hippo when you not find Hippo in shop. Hippo come there at once and fight hunger.” That’s what they call ‘Hippo English,’ ostensibly straight from the mouth of the mascot itself. As people followed the Hippo’s call, Parle Agro became beneficiaries of the first Twitter-based real-time nationwide stock checker. Then they acted on it, sending word to local distribution partners to get snacks onto the newly empty shelves. Thanks to their popularity, Hippo crisps flew off the shelves; thanks to social media, they flew back on them.

In a country where 92% of the snack market is unorganised retail, any entrant into the $1.5bn industry faces a tough job in tracking their inventory. At zero cost Parle Agro have managed to leverage tweeters, ‘mostly… in cities where Hippo is present but maybe temporarily unavailable,’ as an essential part of their supply lines. Let’s review the raw numbers: the number of people tracking Hippo stock has eclipsed 400, which is around 50% of its paid sales and distribution network itself. Due to the constant stream of supply, they also managed to up their sales by 76%.

This is all, of course, focused on places where Hippo is already sold, but it has the potential to be so much more, according to Nadia Chauhan, joint MD & CMO of Parle Agro; “if a retailer doesn’t stock Hippo but there is a consumer demand for it, we can convince him to stock it.” Parle Agro and Creativeland Asia haven’t just created infrastructure to track stock, they’ve created one that can identify, gauge demand in, and prioritise new markets, all while becoming the darling snack of the Indian blogosphere.

About The Author

David Shawcross is a Social Media advocate and commentator. He has a degree in History and Politics from the University of Reading. David interned at Social Media Library in Spring 2010. You can catch him on Twitter at @DaveyStonew12.


David Shawcross, Social Media Case Study